





^^&J 









..,,W'H'i'-^; ■■;■ ■. 








felfei 



RECENT SOCIAL THEORIES. 



CONSIDERATIONS 



RECENT SOCIAL THEORIES. 



BOSTON: 

LITTLE, BUOWN, AND CO. 

1853. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in tlie year 1853, by 

LITTLE, BROWN, & CO. 

In the Clerk's OflBce of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 






BOSTON : 

PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 
No. 22, School Street. 



509122 



This little book has been written from a sincere 
desire to help the progress of sound judgment 
and right principle. It is the plain expression 
of earnest convictions. 

The position which we as a people hold, is 
such, that questions in social and political phi- 
losophy and practice have an immediate claim 
on our careful attention. On the opinions we 
adopt, depend not merely our personal interests, 
but those of our country. 

April 15, 1853. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. — The People 1 

II. — Liberty 23 

III. — The L'niveksal Repubj-ic 39 

lY. — Socialism 49 

y. — co-opeeatiye associations 79 

\1. — The Future 120 



« I do not assert that I have brought forward any specific, 
or any new remedy of a partial nature, for the evils I have 
enumerated. Indeed, I have not feared to reiterate hacknied 

truths As to the facts, too, on which I have 

grounded my reasonings, they are mostly well known, or 
might be so; for I have been content to follow other men's 
steps, and so assist in wearing a pathway for the public 
mind." 

The Claims op Labour. 



I. 

THE PEOPLE. 



" Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver ; and 
adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings." 

Burke. 

THE confusion of thought which^ of late 
years, has peryaclecl every portion of 
philosophy on the continent of Europe, 
which has shown itself in religion, in morals, 
and in the lightest as in the most profound 
works of literature and art, has been espe- 
cially manifest in the speculations and the 
practice of social and pohtical science. Ex- 
travagancies of the most opposite nature 
have found strenuous supporters. On the 
one hand, a short-sighted selfishness has de- 
fended prescriptive errors and falsehoods; 



Z THE PEOPLE. 

on the other, a blind enthusiasm has been 
wiUing to do battle for some misty vision or 
some unattainable reality. Experience has 
been neglected, and passion or fancy has been 
chosen as guide through the most difficult 
passes. 

Clear, vigorous, and truthful thought was 
needed to direct aright the awakening ener- 
gies and the fresh powers of this time of 
rapid changes. But such thought has been 
greatly wanting. The period has been 
marked by the assumption with which theo- 
ries, unsupported by facts, have been put 
forward; by the boldness with which falla- 
cies have been propounded, and the readi- 
ness with which they have been accepted 
as truths. 

No errors of thought have been more 
common, and none more dangerous, than 
those relating to the principle of Liberty 
and to the forms of Government. The re- 
formers who have adopted and put them 
forward have seemed to occupy themselves 
with no considerations of circumstances or 
possibilities. The actual condition of affaii's, 



THE POPULAR CREED. O 

and the immutable laws of nature by which 
the world is governed^ have alike been dis- 
regarded in their speculations. Without 
considering the differences in nations, both 
in character and in natural and material 
position, — differences which render neces- 
sary different apphcations of principles and 
different forms of institutions suited to the 
special development of each people, — they 
have, throughout Europe, raised an almost 
simultaneous cry for Universal Liberty, for 
the estabhshment of E-epubhcs, and for the 
direct government of the people by itself. 

The proposal is a seductive one. To 
nations that have labored under the oppres- 
sions of absolute monarchies, it affords a 
dazzHng hope ; to the visionary and the 
dreamer, it offers the gayest promise ] and it 
excites the enthusiastic support of all those 
whose love of liberty and of humanity is a 
passion, and not a principle. But the wise 
lover of the great cause of human progress 
views with regret and dismay this universal 
and eager demand for popular liberty. The 
advance of freedom, and the elevation of 



4 THE PEOPLE. 

the oppressed and suffering, are delayed and 
endangered by rashness and inconsideration. 
It is easy for the men who declare them- 
selves lovers of the people, and who are at 
the head of what is called the Democratic 
party, to denounce all those who oppose 
their action as the friends of absolutism and 
the maligners of the people. But, among 
those who are thus denounced, there are 
some who, while they acknowledge with rea- 
diness the self-sacrificing fervor, the strong 
hope, and faithful zeal, of many of the men 
whose course they regard as most dangerous, 
claim for themselves an equal spirit of self- 
denial, a zeal as earnest, a hope as strong, 
and a more perfect trust, that, in the long 
stretch of time, the progress of the world is 
assured. They believe that progress to be 
slow ; and they have learned " the better for- 
titude of patience," alike to labor and to wait. 
They believe that imprudence and violence 
oppose it; and they love the cause of the 
people too well to endanger it by following 
the counsels of inexperience and folly. Un- 
seduced by words and shows of things, with 



OPINIONS OF THE LEADERS. O 

constancy unbroken by disappointment; with 
•trnwayering confidence; they hold to their 
faith that the rights of all men will at last 
be vindicated and acknowledged; because 
they beheve those rights to be the care of 
divine as well as of human power. 

The difficulties and errors of some points 
of the popular pohtical creed may be best 
shown by exhibiting the opinions of certain 
individuals who have been the most promi- 
nent in the recent revolutions. But it 
should be remembered; in reference to these 
opinions; that they represent; not so much 
the views of single men as of parties; and 
that the individual who has expressed them 
may sink into obscurity and neglect; while 
the force of these ideaS; and the danger con- 
cealed in them; is Kttle affected by his fate. 

Kossuth; Mazzini; and Louis BlanC; are 
now the foremost leaders of the republican 
cause in Europe. Differing widely from 
each other in character and in minor points 
of opinion; they coincide in many of their 
more important political views. Neither of 



THE PEOPLE. 



them belongs to what is termed the most 
advanced section of the Democratic party of 
Europe ; neither of them are red republicans 
of the darkest hue ; and, though the logical 
consequences of the views which they pro- 
fess would lead them at last to stand on the 
same ground with the wildest democrats, 
their actual position is hardly more than 
midway between the fanatics on the one 
side and on the other. All of them men 
of remarkable powers of mind ; all of them 
having devoted themselves, from early youth, 
to what they esteemed the sei:vice of their 
country ; all of them having suffered for the 
cause of Liberty; all possessing the ability 
to move and control other men; all now 
exiles, but recognized leaders of the opinions 
of a party, which, though for a moment 
crushed, is by no means extinct, — they hold 
a position which demands, in addition to a 
sincerity and devotion that we may allow 
them, such wisdom and foresight as they do 
not possess. 

The fundamental principles of their poli- 
tical philosophy — principles which are the 



groundwork of action — are such as would 
lead only to confusion, and would destroy tlie 
hope of progress ; for their political system 
is founded upon the assumption that wisdom 
and power are derived directly and imme- 
diately from the people, — that is, from the 
great mass of any nation ; and, consequently, 
that poHtical hberty is an inherent right of 
mankind, and that a republic is necessarily 
the best form of government. On these 
points, Kossuth has not always expressed 
himself with distinctness or consistency. 
The character of his eloquence is, for the 
most part, declamatory rather than logical, 
and abounds with the fine artifices of ora- 
tory ; so that it is often difficult to arrive at 
his real opinion. There can be no doubt, 
however, that the basis of his poHtical system 
is such as has been stated. In his speech at 
Birmingham on the 12th November, 1851, 
he said : " My belief is, that it is the instinct 
of the people which is the true' revelation 
of mankind's divine origin. It is therefore, 
I was saying, that the people is everywhere 
highly honorable, noble, and good." 



8 THE PEOPLE. 

From his first speech to his last in Ame- 
rica; he showed that he set the people above 
the government which they themselves had 
chosen and established; and he appealed 
from the constituted authority to popular 
passion. " I know that I have the honor," 
he said when he landed in New York in 
December, 1851, "to be in a country where 
the Sovereign is not the Government, but 
the People ; " and this insult, unintentional 
but real, was received with applause and 
with satisfaction by the foohsh crowd of 
fickle followers, by whom he was then flat- 
tered with unworthy adulation. And again, 
in his lecture on the state of Europe, deli- 
vered some months later in New York, he 
declared that " Democracy is but the embo- 
diment of freedom." 

It would be easy to multiply such exam- 
ples, and to carry out into detail the illustra- 
tions of these opinions. 

Mazzini has expressed himself with more 
distinctness on the same points. In one of 
his late works he writes : " To the dogma 
of absolute, immutable authority concentred 



in a single indiyidual or in a determinate 
power, is substituted the dogma of the 
progressive authority of the people, — the 
collective; perpetual interpreter of the law 
of God." * And again, in the same work, 
in a passage of offensive declamation, he 
says : " Humanity declares to-day, God is 
God, and the people is his prophet. 
God flames at the summit of the social 
pyramid: the people studies, collects, and 
interprets his will at the base." t 

The same extravagance, under a httle 
different form, is to be found in frequent 
passages throughout the writings of Maz- 
zini. In a pamphlet written in 1835, but 
first printed in 1850, he states his doctrine 
thus : " And as we beheve in Humanity the 
sole and only interpreter of the Law of God, 



* "Le Pape au DLx-Neuvidme Siecle." Paris, 1850. 
p. 21. 

■\ "L'humanite repond aujourd'hui, Dieu est Dieij, et 
LE PEUPLE EST SON PROPHETE. Dieu flamboie au sommet de 
la pyramide sociale ; le peuple etudie, recueille, interprete 
ses volontes h. la base." Id. p. 44. — The same passage is to 
be found in " Pio IX. Lettera di Giuseppe Mazzini al Clero 
ItaUano." Italia, 1850, p. 10. 



10 THE PEOPLE. 

we believe for each, state in the People, sole 
master, sole sovereign, sole interpreter of 
the law of Humanity which decides the 
national missions." * 

In a letter addressed to the Italian Clergy 
in 1850, the doctrine appears more concisely. 
" This, then, is our doctrine : God first, the 
people afterwards ,* and the people, inter- 
preter of the laws of God."t 

But it is in an address to the Peoples 
("Aux Peuples "), issued by Ledru Rollin, 
Mazzini, Albert Darasz, and Arnold Huge, 
in the name of the Central Democratic 
European Committee, that these views re- 
ceive their final development of extravagant 
absurdity. " Every man," says this address, 
" who pretends, by the isolated labor of his 
understanding, however powerful it may be, 
to discover now a definitive solution for the 
problems which agitate the masses, con- 
demns himself to error through incomplete- 



* ««Foi et Avenir." Paris, 1850. p. 85. 

f «E questa 6 pure dottrina nostra: Dio prima, il popolo 
poi; e il popolo interprete delle legge di Dio." — Pio JX. 
p. 13. 



REVOLUTIONARY ADDRESS. 11 

ness, since he renounces one of the eternal 
sources of truth; — the collective intuition 
of the People in action. The definitive 
solution is the secret of victory. Placed 
to-day under the influence of the medium 
that we "wish to transform ; agitated, in spite 
of ourselves, by all the instincts, by all the 
reactionary sentiments, of the struggle be- 
tween persecution, and the exhibition of 
selfishness that a factitious society, founded 
upon material interests and mutilated in its 
noblest faculties, presents to us, — we can 
ill comprehend what there is most holy, 
most vast, most energetic, in the soul of the 
People. Our systems, drawn in the recesses 
of our closets from the teachings of tradi- 
tions, deprived of the power which bursts 
from the cry of actuality, from the me, 
from the conscience of humanity, can be in 
great part only an anatomy made upon 
dead bodies, revealing the disease, analyzing 
death, and powerless to feel and understand 
life. Life ! it is the People roused : it is 
the instinct of the multitudes elevated to an 
exceptional power by contact; by the pro- 



12 THE PEOPLE. 

phetic feeling of great things to be done ; 
by the spontaneous, sudden, electrical asso- 
ciation of the public square : it is action 
over exciting all the faculties of hope, of 
devotion, of enthusiasm, and of love, which 
to-day slumber ,* and reveahng man in the 
unity of his nature, and in the plenitude of 
his realizing powers. The grasp of the 
hands of a workman, in one of those histori- 
cal moments which initiate an epoch, will 
perhaps teach us more with regard to the 
organization of the future than can to-day 
the cold and discouraged labor of the under- 
standing, or the science of the illustrious 
dead of two thousand years ago." ^ 

Nor does the creed of Louis Blanc differ 
much from this. In one of his latest works 



* For this address, see ♦* Le Proscrit : Journal de la Ee- 
publique Universelle." Aout, 1850. p. 48. It is dreary work 
to read so much folly, so much obscurity and confusion of 
thought; nor would it be worth while to quote at such length, 
were not this passage a striking illustration of the vagueness 
and rashness of men chosen by their companions in exile to 
keep alive the spirit and to rouse the hopes of the democratic 
party in Europe. 

The close of the extract that has been translated above 



LOUIS BLANC. 13 

he says : " I have endeavored to prove . . . 
that the sovereign, comprising all the citi- 
zens without exception, would not be unjust ; 
for one is not so towards oneself." * 

And again, in the same pamphlet : " I am 
the pioneer of a route, which leads to a 
world where what it is to command and to 
obeT/ will not be known ; insolent expressions, 
drawn from the vocabulary of human folly ! 
The doctrine of fraternal equahty admits the 
diversity of functions based upon that of 
aptitudes ', but, in this doctrine of immortal 
essence, all men are kings, all are priests." t 

It appears from these quotations, that the 
old doctrine of the divine right of kings has 
been supplanted by one not less absurd, — 
the divine right of the people. " Vox populi 



runs as follows in the original : *« Le serrement de mains 
d*un ouvrier, en un de ces moments historiques qui initient 
une epoque, nous apprendra peut-etre plus sur I'organization 
de I'avenir, que ne le peuvent aujourd'hui le travail froid et 
decourage de I'intelligence, ou la science des morts illustres 
d'il y a deux mille ans." 

* " La Republique Une et Indivisible." Paris, 1851. 
p. 58. 

t Id. p. 74. 



14 THE PEOPLE. 

VOX Dei " is the literal rendering of the 
creed of these modern reformers. It would 
be of little consequence if such a doctrine 
were put forward by a few foolish and 
powerless men; but, when it is held by 
those who give expression to the opinions 
of a sect; and who may become, as they 
have already been, the leaders in action of a 
great party, it becomes a matter of concern 
that the dangerous tendency of their system 
should be recognized. And this is the more 
important, inasmuch as there is a certain 
deceitful and attractive glitter about these 
notions in regard to the claims and the cha- 
racter of " the people." They addi-ess mth 
pecuHar force all those — and it is a large 
class — who are discontented with a hard 
and laboring lot, and are suffering under an 
undefined sense of imaginary wrongs, as well 
as those who are bearing the real wrongs 
which tyrants of one kind and another may 
inflict; and they find still more adherents 
among those — 

** Who praise and who admii-e they know not what. 
And know not whom, but as one leads the other." 



vox POPULI VOX DEI. 15 

What is tliis people which is declared to 
be the prophet of God^ — this people that 
studies and interprets God's will ? What is 
this people; whose intuitive impulses are 
wiser than the thoughts of the wise ; whose 
passions are nobler than the principles of 
the virtuous ? What is this people, of which 
each man is a king, and each man a priest ? 
Is it a chosen nation of God, enlightened by 
his spirit, and guided by his will ? " The 
people " of these wiiters is simply the mass 
of mankind. The absurdity and impiety of 
such expressions as have been (Quoted, when 
reduced to simple words, is too manifest for 
exposure. Is there any one who will assert 
that " the people " in any country is so wise 
that it can know, or so calm that it can 
choose, what is best for itself ? Does it not 
everywhere need counsel, restraint, and edu- 
cation ? Is the wisdom which is to advance 
the world to be foimd in any multitude ? 
Is evil no longer in possession of any heart ? 
Is misery, that knows no care and foresight, 
for ever banished ; and ignorance, that knows 
no choice between right and wrong, for ever 



16 THE PEOPLE. 

defeated? Is God's will so plain that all 
the world can read it, and so enforced that 
all the world will obey it ? 

There is no intelligible meaning in decla- 
rations like those which have been quoted. 
If the people are intuitively wise, and in- 
spired with the divine breath, it would fol- 
low that the world must of necessity be all 
which these wild theorists desire it should 
become. If the people is the prophet and 
the expounder of God's Avill, it would follow 
that; as that will is one, the will of the people 
could be but one, and there could be no dis- 
sension or discord on earth. But, as discord 
exists, where is the line to be drawn between 
those who pronounce and those who con- 
tradict God's decrees ? All men may be 
kings, all may be priests; but some are 
tyrants, and some are priests of a false God. 

The inextricable confusions to which this 
doctrine leads, and the false assumptions on 
which it is based, need not be further 
pointed out ', but it may be well to show to 
what contradictions its authors and support- 
ers are brought. In a letter written in 



CONTRADICTIONS. 17 

1 847, Mazzini says : " The Italians are mere 
cliildrerL, but with, good instincts. They 
have not a shadow of intellect or political 
experience. I speak of the multitude; and 
not of the few leaders." * And this is the 
people who are to interpret the will of God 
for Italy ! 

In a pamphlet of Louis Blanc's, printed 
in 1849, he confesses how impossible it is to 
realize this dream of popular wisdom and 
virtue as the world now exists : " How long, 
great God ! is the infancy of the people ! " 
And again he declares : " As for myself, I 
have always thought, always written, that, 
in the state of dependence and of ignorance 
in which the rural population vegetates, it 
would be folly to hope immediately for in- 
telligent and free choice." f But, however 
ignorant, " all men are kings, all are 
priests " ! 

* Pari. Doc. Correspondence respecting the Affairs of 
Italy. 1849. p. 223. 

t "Pour moi, j 'avals tou jours pense, toujours ecrit, que 
dans I'etat de dependance, d'ignorance, ou veg^tent les popula- 
tions rurales, il y aurait folie k esperer tout d'abord des choix 
intelligents et libres." — Ajipel aux Honnetes Gens, p. 35. 

C 



18 THE PEOPLE. 

Leaving any further attention to these 
extravagancies^ let ns consider what "the 
people " is, and what in reality are its 
rights. 

In all historical times, the great mass of 
men have been exposed to physical and 
moral evils, sometimes of one kind, some- 
times of another, but alw^ays of such a sort 
as to hinder them from the attainment of 
more than a small measure of earthly good, 
and to prevent the full development of 
their spiritual powers. And this poor, op- 
pressed, laboring, and suffering assembly of 
men, bound together in every age by the tie 
of a common misery, — this, in the language 
of the present times, is "the people." It 
has been the people who have ministered to 
the ambition, and who have borne the cruel- 
ties, of kings J who have suffered from the 
misgovernment and the mistakes of rulers j 
who have ignorantly worked, under false 
direction, for their own sorrow j who have 
fought against their own good; who have 
been captivated by fatal delusions ', who 
have been scourged by pestilence and famine 



ITS PLACE. 19 

and -war; who have obeyed false prophets^ 
and have killed the prophets and the ser- 
vants of God. And noW; eighteen hundred 
years after the divine preaching of the reli- 
gion whose substance and whose authority 
were the doctrines of immortality and of 
lovO; — and which; as a consequence from 
these doctrineS; announced the kingdom of 
Heaven upon Earth j declaring the eternal 
connection of man with man^ and the respon- 
sibility of man to man; intrusting those 
children of God who were poor in earthly or 
in heavenly possessions, to those who were 
rich, — even now, '' the people " sit in the 
dark night of ignorance, and know little of 
the light of love and faith, catching only a 
feeble glimmer of the dawning of the day of 
human brotherhood upon earth. 

It is not, then, to this people that we are 
to look for wisdom and intelHgence. It is 
not to them that we are to trust the progress 
of improvement. They could not, if they 
would, rescue themselves from evil; and 
they have no help for others. But their 
progress must be stimulated and guided by 



20 THE PEOPLE. 

the fe'^ who have been blessed v/ith the 
opportunities, and the rare genius, fitting 
them to lead. Nor is their advance to 
depend on the discovery of any new reme- 
dies. There are now at work in the world, 
principles of virtue and strength enough 
for all the trials and exigencies of progress. 
The improvement which is certain must 
come from the gradual spread of these old 
principles ; from their taking possession of 
the hearts and ruling the lives of men ', and 
the way for them is to be cleared and made 
easy by the efforts of the wise and the 
good everywhere. These principles are not 
named Equality, nor Communism, nor the 
Sohdarity of Peoples : they are Love, and 
Truth, and pure Liberty. 

It is the will of God — a will we may 
not understand nor question — that progress 
should be very gradual; not visible from 
year to year, and only with difficulty to be 
seen from century to century. But this is 
no reason for discouragement. In all ages 
there have been martyrs who have died for 
the sake of the people, and who in death 



ITS CLAIMS. 21 

have trusted that tlieii* labor would be 
blessed; though, they cQuld not gain the 
assurance while they lived. And their "work 
was not performed nor their blood offered 
in vain j for their example has given anima- 
tion to the efforts of a constant line of fol- 
lowers. The cause of the people always 
claims undiminished effort. It appeals to 
the heart of every man to rescue from suf- 
fering and degradation such fellow-men as 
his help can reach. It appeals to the con- 
science of every man to do the work which 
has been intrusted to him. The people in 
many places are misled, troubled, and exas- 
perated. They are seeking for help. It is 
for us to help them, that they may help 
themselves. We cannot keep things as they 
are. The world may be regenerated by us 
not less than by others. In our impatience, 
we may long for more rapid and wider 
results than with our best efforts we can 
reach; but even our faintest exertion will 
count in this work of ages. We can do 
something at least to lessen human suffering ; 
and, though successive centuries may pass 



22 THE PEOPLE. 

away before the peoj)le shall be enlightened 
and free and happy, yet we shall have 
helped the coming of that time, and God 
will remember, though man may forget. 



II. 

LIBERTY. 



« Esteeming happiness to Ite in Liberty, and Liberty in 
excellence of soul." — Pericles to the Athenians, 

Thucydides, ii. 43. 

'*0f Liberty tbere are two kiads: the false, as where a 
man is free to do what he likes ; the true, as where a man is 
free to do what he ought." KiNasLEY. 

THE false notions concerning "the peo- 
ple " which, have been for some time 
past, and are now, common among the de- 
mocrats of Europe, have as their natural 
sequence the doctrine that Liberty is an 
inherent right of mankind, and, consequently, 
that every nation has a claim to its unli- 
mited possession. 

Without entering upon the broad and 
perplexed question of rights, it is neces- 
sary to examine a little into the nature of 



24 LIBERTY. 

Liberty-; in order clearly to understand the 
character of this doctrine. 

The word ^^ Liberty" is often used very 
vaguely; with little comprehension of its 
true meaning; and sometimes indeed with 
significations contradictory to it. This pro- 
ceeds from, and gives occasion to, much 
obscurity of thought and much misdirected 
zeal. A mist of words has obscured and 
hidden the fair reality. " Certain it is/' says 
Lord Bacon, " that words, as a Tartar's bow, 
do shoot back upon the understanding of 
the wisest, and mightily entangle and per- 
vert the judgment ; so as it is almost neces- 
sary, in all controversies and disputations, to 
imitate the wisdom of the mathematicians, 
in setting down in the very beginning the 
definition of our words and terms." And in 
nothing is this more necessary than in the 
discussion of a topic where a mistake of 
understanding may lead to an error or a 
wrong in action. "What, then, is the defini- 
tion of Liberty ? 

The simplest, and as it may be called 
the original, meaning of Liberty is — that 



ITS DEFINITION. 25 

state in wMch a man is free from restraint 
of whatever kind. There is no reference 
in its signification to the nature of this 
restraint; whether adapted to promote or 
to impede the true development of his 
character. 

But this definition; although the only one 
correct for certain uses of the word, becomes 
very incorrect the instant that we connect 
with the term Liberty any moral idea; the 
instant that we make it the object of desire, 
of enthusiasm, or of hope ', the instant that 
it becomes to us the expression of all the 
good which we believe attainable in human 
government; and the aim of our highest and 
steadiest pursuit on earth. A definition, 
then, must be found, which, based on the 
primitive meaning of the word, shall give 
to it all the extension of which it admits, 
and shall answer to that Liberty for which 
the best men of all time have lived, toiled, 
and died ; to that Liberty whose distant 
radiance has given light in the darkest dun- 
geons ; to that Liberty in whose defence 
Milton lost his sight, content to have lost 



26 



it in so noble a task ; and which could ani- 
mate the imprisoned but still loyal Lovelace 
to sing; — 

" Stone walls do not a prison make, 

Nor iron bars a cage : 
Minds innocent and quiet take 

That for a hermitage. 
If I have freedom in my love, 

And in my soul am free. 
Angels alone, that soar above. 

Enjoy such Liberty." 

Liberty, then, in its nobler signification, 
is the being free from all restraints which 
may prevent the doing of what is right. In 
other words, Liberty is the possession of the 
power to do the will of God.* 



* It was after writing the above passage, and giving the 
foregoing definition to Liberty, that the writer met with the 
following striking passage in Tyndale's noble book, entitled, 
*' The Obedience of a Christian Man," which was first printed 
in 1527: — 

"Notwithstanding, to follow lusts is not freedom, but 
captivity and bondage. If God open any man's wits to make 
him feel in his heart that lusts and appetites are damnable, 
and give him power to hate and resist them, then is he free 
even with the freedom wherewith Christ maketh free, and 
hath power to do the will of God." — The Works of the English 
Reformers, William Tyndale and John Frith. London, 1831. 
Vol. i. p. 217. 



NATURAL LIBERTY. 27 

MucIl confusion has arisen from tlie not 
clearly distinguishing these two legitimate 
meanings of the word. Much has been writ- 
ten about Liberty, as if the mere being free 
from all involuntary restraint were necessa- 
rily a desirable and excellent thing. What 
has been called Natural Liberty, meaning by 
this term a state of barbarous wildness and 
separation from the interests of other men, 
has been exalted as more admirable than the 
state of highest civilization. But the only 
Liberty worth having is not that where a 
man is free from every restraint, but where 
he is free from wrong restraint. ISTor is the 
Liberty of the savage entire, even in the 
absence of restraint. A savage is free from 
the bonds of law or custom, from every check 
tipon the performance of his own will ; but 
at the same time he is tyrannized over by his 
very savageness and wildness, which render 
impossible the full development of his cha- 
racter, and often interfere with the enjoy- 
ment of physical life. He is not free in any 
worthy sense. A man in civilized society, if 
brutalized by misery and ignorance, however 



28 



LIBERTY. 



unchecked he may be by law, however des- 
titute of tender care and gentle restraint, 
yet can neither possess nor acquire any true 
Liberty; for ignorance and misery are the 
most terrible of oppressors. Neither the 
savage nor the ignorant have the power to 
perform the will of God. 

But, as the world exists, it is not possible 
for any individual or society or nation to 
possess complete and perfect Liberty. It 
can be possessed only in a limited degree; 
for no individual or society or nation has the 
power to perform the complete will of God. 
Ignorance is the chief obstacle to the posses- 
sion of this power; and as ignorance is 
driven out from her successive strongholds. 
Liberty will come to take her place. But 
with ignorance are allied evil passions and 
bad human institutions. All that is wrong 
in a single heart, or in society, or in the laws, 
is opposed to Liberty. But, on the other 
hand, every advance in intelligence ; every 
evil overcome ; every new spread of sound, 
upright thought; every gain, however slow 
or however small in the progress of right 



ITS LIMITS. 29 

principle; is tlie gain and the fresb. strength 
of Liberty. As long as human nature remains 
as God has created it; a struggle between 
good and evil must exist in the world. Re- 
straint of what is wrong will be needed; and 
not until men become perfect will full and 
perfect Liberty be known. Such Liberty is 
the heritage of angels; and not of men. But 
as men become more and more enlightened 
and virtuouS; Liberty will more and more 
gain possession of the world. Her progress 
will be sloW; for the improvement of man- 
kind is very gradual; but her progress is 
certain; because that improvement is assured. 
But there is another consideration to be 
attended to here. It is that what is right; 
and consequently what is the will of God; 
under some circumstances; may not be 
right; or the will of God; under other cir- 
cumstances. To take a broad example : if 
there were but one family upon earth; many 
things would be right for that family to per- 
form; which would be wrong were it sur- 
rounded by a society. In forming a part of 
society; a man's duties are very different from 



30 



what they would be if he stood alone. There 
iS; however, nothing in the change of rela- 
tions necessarily to deprive him of Liberty ; 
that is; to interfere with his performance of 
the will of God. But as there are in society 
many bad men, and as there happen to be, 
as the result of the lives of these men, many 
bad institutions, it becomes obvious that 
these bad men and bad institutions will in- 
terfere with the pursuit of Liberty. This 
condition introduces a new limitation in the 
use of the word; so that in speaking of 
Liberty, in its social or political relation, 
there is meant that state in which a man is 
not deprived of the power of doing what is 
best for himself or others by the interference 
of another. * 

ISTow, the final object of government — an 
object, indeed, which has never been stead- 



* The phrase " political liberty " is often used as if it meant 
the possession of political power. A nation is said to enjoy 
political liberty where each individual has a share of political 
power. Such a use of words is incorrect and deceitful. The 
phrase generally bears this meaning when the inherent right 
of every individual to political liberty is maintained. 



POLITICAL LIBERTY. 31 

fastly pursued; but has usually been lost sigbt 
of behind selfishness and carelessness — is to 
secure the fullest enjoyment of this power 
to those who are governed. According to 
the different degrees of enlightenment and 
virtue of nations^ so will one form of govern- 
ment or another be best fitted for this object. 
It is not impossible for more poHtical Liberty 
to be enjoyed under a despotism than under 
a republic ; and it is to be clearly recognized 
that universal Liberty, under any form of 
government; is no more possible than univer- 
sal happiness. 

As government, however, is estabhshed 
to secure and promote Liberty, as Liberty 
should be its beginning and end, it fol- 
lows that laws proceeding from government 
should be the rule of Liberty, and its broad- 
est expression. The law of God is the rule 
and expression of perfect Liberty,* and hu- 
man law approves its claim to be the rule 
and expression of such Liberty as may be 
enjoyed on earth, so far as it is harmonious 
with the law of God. 



32 



But, leaving these considerations, let us 
turn to the actual state of the world. It is 
only in a very small portion of it that Liberty 
is enjoyed to any extent. As we direct our 
attention to one country after another, we see 
that beside the moral principles which affect 
the growth of Liberty for good or for evil, 
there are certain physical principles inextri- 
cably interwoven with them, and that the 
two are constantly producing a reciprocal 
effect. These two sets of principles are at 
work in all the affairs of the world. Their 
limits cannot be clearly divided. The influ- 
ence of the one continually assists or opposes 
that of the other. The fact of their union 
and mutual effect is not the less certain that 
it is often to be traced only in the results of 
long courses of action, and is not to be recog- 
nized in each separate event. 

Whether we consider a man or a nation, 
this relation between external circumstances 
and moral characteristics is equally to be 
observed. Virtue and vice, progress and 
decline, liberty or tyranny, depend not alone 
on moral peculiarities of constitution, but 



INFLUENCE OF CIRCUMSTANCES. 33 

also on the featui'es of surrounding nature, 
and the character of surrounding material 
circumstances. 

This fact has been generally overlooked in 
the recent speculations of popular pohtical 
theorists, and has been completely neglected 
in the setting up of the claim for universal 
Liberty. It has not been recognized, that 
the existence of the spirit of Liberty and 
the possibility of free institutions depend 
in great part upon the physical condition 
of a nation. The truth is a sad one ; but 
Liberty, to be permanent, must be founded 
on material abundance sufficient to secure 
a people against slavery to material want. 
And, on the other hand, a lavish abundance 
of the gifts of a prodigal Nature, or the 
collection of vast heaps of wealth in a state, 
are almost equally fatal to the estabhshment 
and continuance of Liberty. 

France, to-day, offers a curious illustration 
of material want and material abundance 
leagued against Liberty, .and strugghng for 
despotism. Throughout a great part of the 
country, and in certain districts of her cities, 

D 



34 



property is divided into such small portions, 
and poverty is so common, that the majority 
of the inhabitants have little care for any 
thing beside securing for themselves the 
means of subsistence from year to year on 
earth, and of salvation hereafter. They are 
not well enough off to be educated to know 
how to gain a free government. Every step 
in their material prosperity will lead them 
toward Liberty. Meanwhile there is in the 
cities a class whom long habits of luxury 
and the indulgences of prosperity have ener- 
vated, and unfitted for the austere demands of 
Liberty *, while dependent upon this portion 
of the community is a still larger class, min- 
istering to their tastes and pampered necessi- 
ties. Both these latter classes prefer any 
thing to political Liberty; for the preju- 
dices, the privileges, and the partialities, 
which are the foundation of their position 
in the world, would dissolve before the com- 
ing of Liberty like mist before the sun. 

There is no portion of the world where 
political Liberty can be enjoyed, except in 
very limited measure ; but there are, on the 



35 



other hand, many countries where even such 
measure of Liberty as is immediately pos- 
sible does not exist. That vast and out- 
rageous oppressions are practised^ that men 
are deprived of many of the choicest gifts 
of Heaven^ and that these oppressions and 
injustices might be done away^ is, however, 
no argument that universal Liberty could 
be substituted in their place. The destruc- 
tion of an abuse is progress toward Liberty, 
not Liberty herself. Liberty is to be gained 
only by slow and arduous training. She is 
not to be seized by force ; she is not to be 
compelled to unwilling service. Her pre- 
sence may be decreed by ruler or by people, 
but she will not obey the decree. The 
efforts of men to gain Liberty, the struggles 
of the oppressed to overthrow tyranny, the 
aspii^ations and the exertions everywhere for 
freedom, are to be cheered, encouraged, and 
aided. But encouragement and aid are not 
always to be given where the shout for 
freedom is the loudest. The name of Lib- 
erty is one of the disguises of tyranny ; and 
many a government has been overthi'own to 



36 



give place to a worse, by those who fought 
under a banner upon which Liberty was 
inscribed; but who, unknowingly to them- 
selves, were serving in the army of oppres- 
sion. "Vingt nations heureuses," said the 
clear-sighted Mallet du Pan, " Vingt nations 
heureuses ont re9u des chaines en cherchant 
un gouvernement parfait, et pas une seule 
ne I'a trouve." 

Liberty has had few defenders thus far. 
Her name has been profaned in all ages. 
Popular despotisms and single tyrants have 
alike abused it. It was in the name of 
Liberty that the horrors of the first French 
Revolution were perpetrated ; it was in her 
name that the rulers of Europe deceived 
their people in the arrangements of 1815 ; it 
was in her name that the follies of 1848 
were committed; and it is in the name of 
Liberty that Louis Napoleon has riveted 
chains on the neck of an unresisting nation ; 
and that Mazzini and Kossuth have attempt- 
ed to stir up the people of Europe to the 
most horrible of civil wars. 

But her true apostles are not the hot 



APOSTLES OF FREEDOM. 37 

leaders of contending factions ; not those 
who excite a dull and suffering people to 
mad violence and war ; not those who claim 
subsidies from foreign nations for the ex- 
penses of the struggle ; not those who pro- 
nounce the wild doctrines of excited fancies ; 
not those who would overthi'ow all existing 
institutions, hoping to find her form beneath 
their ruins : but they who are the true and 
faithful preachers of God's word, teaching 
it by the example of their lives ; they who 
are engaged in spreading knowledge among 
the ignorant, in giving succor to the op- 
pressed, in comforting the miserable, in 
reducing the inequahties of man's condition, 
in forwarding every work of benevolence 
and charity. It is these men who are 
bringing Liberty to earth, and weakening 
the power of oppressors. And with these 
are . joined the statesmen and the leaders 
who know how to temper passion with judg- 
ment ; who despise flattery and selfishness ; 
who feel neither extravagant hope nor faith- 
less despair; who seek for power, not to 
gratify a personal ambition, but to possess 



38 LIBERTY. 

the ability of doing good ; who out of defeat, 
as out of victory, gain fresh strength ; who 
know the evil that is in the world, and nei- 
ther disregard it nor rely upon it in their 
counsels. Such are the apostles of Liberty. 
It will only be when nations learn that 
f Liberty depends not on forms, but on the 
personal character of the individuals who 
compose them ; that it rests on the virtue, the 
power of self-government, of each one of the 
people; that the disadvantages of physical 
condition must be overcome by continual 
effort, and not by any sudden impulse or 
impetuous and quickly exhausted burst ; and 
that freedom is to be preserved only by moral 
excellence, — it is then alone that they will 
possess Liberty, for then they will have 
learned that " where the spirit of the Lord 
is, there is Liberty." 



III. 



THE UNIVERSAL REPUBLIC. 



** Je sais bien qu'il n'en coute rien a une poignee de ba 
yards, que je caracteriserais bien en les appelant fous, de 
vouloir la republique universelle." — Buonaparte, 1797. 



THE establishment of a universal repub- 
lic — that is, of a republican form of 
government in every country — is the prac- 
tical conclusion from the theory of imme- 
diate universal political liberty. "The direct 
government of the people by itself" is the 
form of expression adopted by most of the 
democratic leaders. This is the final result 
of their systems of politics. It is claimed as 
a right of every nation; and a rei)ublican 
form of i^overnment is assumed to be the 



40 THE UNIVERSAL REPUBLIC. 

solution of all political difficulties, and a 
remedy for all political evils. 

This opinion has not been put forward 
alone in words. It has borne bitter fruit in 
action. Among the many causes which led 
to the failure of the struggle in 1848 to free 
Italy from Austrian dominion, to restore to 
her beautiful northern provinces a national 
government, and to give them an increased 
liberty, none was more fatal than the blind 
obstinacy of the leaders of the republican 
party, who chose to divide the efforts of the 
people, to excite the jealousy of neighboring 
cities, and to break hope after hope of di'iving 
the Austrians from the country, rather than 
yield their impracticable convictions, and 
unite all strength in the one great object of 
freeing Lombardy and Venice from the heavy 
yoke under which they had labored so long. 
The success of Charles Albert was dreaded 
by them more than that of the Austrians. 
If they could not have a republic, they would 
have a foreign and oppressive despotism ; 
and they destroyed the chance of a constitu- 
tional monarchy in Northern Italy, for the 



FALSE ASSUMPTION. 41 

love of an impossible and idle dream. Maz- 
zini has written liis own condemnation in 
his " Repnblique et Eoyaute en Italie." 
Radetski had no better allies than he and 
his companions. Nor is this the only exam- 
ple which the few last years have afforded 
of the miserable consequences resulting from 
the adoption of these extreme views. 

The fallacy of the idea of universal liberty 
has been shown in the preceding section. 
It has appeared that limited liberty is all 
that is possible on earth. But it may be 
shown farther to be an assumption un- 
founded in truth; that a republican form of 
government is necessarily the best fitted to 
secure to its subjects the enjoyment of that 
freedom which they are capable of possess- 
ing. To show tliis; it will be necessary to 
recur to some of the original principles of 
government, and to repeat a portion of the 
argument which has been already used in 
relation to liberty. 

Hiunan government, of whatever kind, is 
a mere matter of expediency. There is not, 
nor can there be, in any individual or in any 



42 THE UNIVERSAL REPUBLIC. 

collection of individuals^ an inherent autho- 
rity or right to govern. All right to govern 
is a delegated right. In a perfect state of 
society, — that is, in a state of society where 
each individual conformed his life to the 
principles of Christianity, — there would be 
no human government. It is impossible to 
connect the idea of human government with 
such a society. The only authority would 
be the law of God, and the law of God is 
perfect freedom. 

But, society being only in small part 
Christian, the need of government exists. 
Its only legitimate object is to promote the 
good, that is, the liberty, of its subjects. 
But, in different ages and in different por- 
tions of the world, men exist under different 
degrees of development; and their good is 
not always to be j)romoted in the same man- 
ner. One form of government is not in 
itself necessarily better than another; and 
the form which is best for one nation may 
be the worst for another. " Without piety,'" 
says a writer distinguished for clear good 
sense, " there will be no s^ood srovern- 



NO SAFEOrAED OF LIBERTY. 40 

ment." ^ An absolute monarchy with I3iety 
is better for a people than a republic with- 
out it. 

The reason of this is very plain. The 
progress of Hberty does not depend upon 
any form : it may be impeded, or it may 
be helped, by any government whatsoever. 
The spirit of hberty may grow in spite of a 
bad government, or it may become extinct 
under a good one. The Romans, under des- 
potic kings, grew up to freedom ; under their 
republic, they slowly sank into the basest 
ser-vitude. The Greek states in old times 
found that a republic was no safeguard 
against tyranny ; and in South America to- 
day, it is not the republican but the imperial 
form of government under which the most 
liberty is enjoyed. This argument is no 
defence of tyranny. Tyranny is equally 
bad, and equally possible, under a repubhc 
as under a monarchy. 

There can be no doubt that a republican 
form of government, such as we enjoy, is the 

* "Friends in Council." Book ii. p. 167. 



44 



THE UNIVERSAL REPUBLIC. 



most productive of happiness to our people ; 
but this depends alone on the fact of their 
general moral and intellectual education. 
If we become as a nation corrupted and 
ignorant; no worse form of government can 
be imagined than ours must then become; 
for it would be the irresistible despotism of 
a majority of corrupt and ignorant men. 
No greater evil could fall upon India than 
the establishment of a Hindu republic. It 
would bring no good; no liberty^ but would 
burthen the people with intolerable calami- 
ties and oppression. Even were the present 
absolute government of the country by the 
English as bad as its enemies assert, it would 
be vastly preferable to a native democracy. 
And yet; in these violent; unthinking times, 
a government in which all power is vested 
in the hands of the people is declared to 
possess an inherent and divine virtue. 

But it is urged; every man can judge 
what is best for himself better than it can 
be judged for him; and in a republic every 
man has, or should have, a voice in the 
government. Let us, however; look a little 



THE MAJORITY. 45 

into ttds last assertion. Every man, it is 
true, may have a vote under a republic ; but 
there must be a majority and a minority, 
and every republic is founded on the princi- 
ple of the rule of the majority. Universal 
suffrage is claimed by the doctrinaires of 
republicanism as being the means of giving 
the fullest expression to the will of the ma- 
jority. Without entering into the question 
whether universal suffrage is the best means 
to this end, which is very doubtful, it is 
desirable to examine into the right of a 
majority to rule, and to see whether it has 
any natural virtue ; or whether it is, hke all 
other human rule, a simple expedient, good 
under some circumstances, bad under others. 
Suppose, for instance, that a question 
were to arise in a state, where an absolute 
majority was the ruling power, of the high- 
est consequence to the welfare of the com- 
munity. Two parties exist, opposed to each 
other. The vote is taken, and the numbers 
are found to be exactly equal. A majority 
of numbers being required, neither of these 
parties can enforce their will upon the other. 



46 THE UNIVERSAL REPUBLIC. 

But suppose that; instead of being balanced, 
two-thirds of the votes are given on one side, 
and one-third on the other j but the smaller 
party is composed of the wise and intelligent 
men of the state, while the larger is made 
up of the unreflecting and passionate mass 
of the people. Is there any inherent right, 
any real authority, save that of conventional 
prescription, which is to enforce the dictates 
of folly over the convictions of wisdom ? 

The case has been well stated by an able 
writer : — "A mere preponderance of num- 
bers by no means implies preponderance 
either of capacity, of good intention, or even 
of strength. Wisdom generally lies with 
the minority ; fairness often, power not un- 
frequently. There is, and can be, no law 
of nature, no axiom of eternal morals, in vir- 
tue of which three fooHsh men are entitled 
to bind and overpower two wise men, or 
three weak men two strono- men." ^ 



* Mr. W. R. Grreg, in an article on " The Expected Re- 
form BilV* — Edinburgh Review, No. CXGIII. Jan. 1852. 
p. 258. 



THE MAJORITY. 47 

Nor is this the testimony only of abstract 
reasoning : it is the practical conclusion of 
even the most ardent supporters of the most 
democratic theories. In the famous "Decla- 
ration of the 'E-ights of Man/' Robespierre 
declares : " Aucune portion du peuple ne 
pent exercer la puissance du peuple entier." 
And in a speech before the Convention, on 
the 28th of December, 1792, he broke forth 
with the words : " La vertu fut toujours en 
minorite sur la terre." ^ 

It was the act of the majority which 
doomed Socrates to death, and Aristides to 
banishment. It was the act of the majority 
which has established the present arbitrary 
ruler in France. Of all tyranny, that of the 
majority has been the most fearful. 

And, in truth, the rule of a majority in a 
state can be tolerable only when the people 
has reached such a degree of intelligence 
and self-control that it is guided in its deci- 
sions by a sense of justice, and recognizes 



* "Ilistoire Parlementaire de la Revolution." Tome xxii. 
p. 122. 



48 THE UNIVERSAL REPUBLIC. 

its responsibilities to be commensurate with 
its authority. Otherwise, all good is left to 
chance, while much evil is certain. 

The conclusions, then, upon which we 
must rest, are, that no form of government 
possesses any inherent virtue ; that liberty 
may be developed under one, as under 
another; that that government is to be 
preferred which best secures to its subjects 
the means of progress in liberty ] that these 
means may be secured under any form, but 
would be for the most part absent from a 
universal republic. 



IV. 

SOCIALISM. 



" Cum enim par habetur honos summis et infimis qui sint 
in omni populo, necesse est ipsa agquitas iniquissima sit." 

CiCEEO. 

nVTO one, who looks seriously at the exist- 
±.y ing social condition of the greater part 
of the civihzed world, can derive mnch 
pleasure from the contemplation. He will 
see ignorance, inefficiency, and selfishness, in 
a league against the happiness of mankind. 
He will see the free gifts of Heaven un- 
equally shared and unjustly confined. He 
will see false opinions in religion, in mora- 
lity, and in politics, exercising a tremendous 
influence in rendering the difierences in the 
condition of men more ochous and intolera- 

E 



50 SOCIALISM. 

ble. He will see sufferings that might be 
alleviatedj sorrows that might be lightened, 
misery that might be relieved, poverty that 
might be diminished. On every side he 
will see the darkness of wrong, and only in 
broken rays the light of justice and truth 
shining in upon the general gloom. And 
he might turn away disheartened from the 
spectacle, did not these scattered rays give 
promise of the coming of a brighter and a 
happier time. 

The earth is divided between two great 
classes of men. One, far greater in num- 
bers than the other, have not the means to 
provide for their best physical or spiritual 
interests. The other, a small minority, pos- 
sess this power. 

Although this disparity of circumstances 
amongst men may be regarded as the will of 
God towards them, yet, as he has placed us 
upon earth with powers of influencing others 
for good or for evil; as he has made good 
attainable by human exertion, and has sub- 
jected evil to control by human means ; and 
especially as we know that he desires the 



NEED OF EFFORT. 51 

happiness of all liis creatures, — the infe- 
rence is clear that he has imposed npon 
every man the duty of doing a part, accord- 
ing to his ability to make the condition of 
others more conformable to their capacities 
for improvement. And hence each evil that 
may be overthrown, every wrong that exists, 
is a motive for exertion, and a suggestion of 
duty. 

The world is not so advanced that there 
is no need of effort. It is still far behind 
the wise, clear thought of the lovers and 
the leaders of its progress. Without yield- 
ing to the dreams of enthusiasm, without 
hoping for ideal and unreal Utopias, there is 
enough within the possibility of attainment 
to give scope to the most strenuous efforts, 
and strength to the purest and noblest ambi- 
tion. And though there is still so much 
to be done, the past affords reason for hope 
that gradually it will be accomplished. The 
state of society is better now than it has 
ever been in past ages. Each century has 
made some advance, and the progress will 
continue. Our oolden acre is not in the 



52 SOCIALISM. 

past : the old legend is reversed ; it lies far 
forward in the future. Even in the midst 
^of the confusion of the times in which we 
\ourselves live^ w^e may distinguish the signs 
of the slow onward march of the world. 

The political revolutions which have fol- 
lowed each other in rapid succession in 
Europe during the last seventy years^ have 
been the result^ more or less immediate, of 
a social revolution; which seems only in its 
commencement. They have been the sign 
of the rottenness of the existing condition 
of society. They have failed in producing 
any greater improvement in this condition, 
because as yet the truths upon which society 
can alone securely and happily rest have 
been recognized and acknowledged by very 
few; and, consequently, efforts have been 
misdirected and strength w^asted. The great 
mass of those who are siiffering from social 
evils are too ignorant to know where the 
remedy for them is to be found, or how it is 
to be applied; and this ignorance on the 
part of those who suffer has been connected 
with the equal extravagance and foolishness 



GRADUAL ADVANCE. 53 

of many of those who have assumed the 
character; and gained the position, of social 
reformers. 

Still; something has been won in these 
years of disappointment. Many failures 
have been steps forward; for every failure 
may shorten the way to success. Contrast 
the condition of the people of Europe now 
with what it was before the first French 
revolution; and the manifest gain will be 
seen. Many old fictions in theory; and 
wrongs in practice; have been swept away. 
Some new evilS; indeed; have sprung up ; 
but by their side has sprung up new good. 
The quick succession of violent changes has 
awakened a conscience among those who 
before had thought themselves secure in 
worldly privileges and prescriptions. They 
have begun to learn the true tenui'e of such 
possessions; and to understand that no selfish 
claim to them is sufiicient; that no exclu- 
sive right to them can be sustained; and 
that no title to earthly advantages, however 
ancient and hedged round it may be; is valid, 
unless it be supported by clearly acknow- 



54 SOCIALISM. 

ledged responsibilities and well-performed 
duties. 

But let us regard more particularly some 
of the special obstacles which have inter- 
fered to prevent a more rapid social reform 
during this time of revolution. 

One of the chief difficulties has been that 
which may be seen more or less in the his- 
tory of all reforms, — a too eager haste on 
the part of those engaged in the work to 
attain the object of their wishes. It is natu- 
ral, indeed, for all men, in view of the near 
and uncertain end of life, to desire a quick 
result from any course of action in which 
their interests or their affections are engaged. 
Those who suffer from a wrong, and those 
who struggle against it, long for its speedy 
remedy; and if the means at hand, though 
finally sufficient, seem slow to produce the 
desired result, others more violent, or more 
untried, are apt to be preferred. Such has 
been the case in these years. Not content 
to improve society, the hasty enthusiasts of 
progress have proposed to reconstruct it 



FALSE SYSTEMS. 55 

altogether. Not content with, the means 
afforded by experience, they have sought 
those offered by fancy. The period has 
been one of theories of social progress ', and 
these theories, flattering and unsubstantial, 
have been supported with bigoted earnest- 
ness, and contemptuous disregard of facts. 

Another frequent error has been the con- 
founding of what is not essential to social 
progress with what is essential. The form 
has been put in the place of the spirit ; and 
that improvement has been looked for from 
a change in the arrangements of society 
which could only come from a change in the 
characters of the individuals who compose 
it. The means have been placed on a level 
with the end. Institutions and organizations 
have been looked to as an immediate remedy 
for evils which lay far deeper than any 
influence of this kind could quickly reach. 
System has succeeded system, each equally 
based on this false idea. Within a short 
memory, St. Simon, Fourier, Pierre Leroux, 
Robert Owen, Cabet, Louis Blanc, and 
many others, have, one after another, offered 



56 SOCIALISM. 

their panaceas to the world. Each has 
proposed some formal and conventional re- 
arrangement of society. Communism or 
equality, the right to labor, the destruction 
of individual property, the overthrow of all 
authority, have been forms under which 
these propositions have been brought for- 
ward, and have served as the bases of plans 
by which society should be renewed, and 
wrong banished from the earth. But, al- 
though they have succeeded in unsetthng 
men's minds, and in giving false lustre to 
vague fancies, the old truth yet remains,— 
sad it may be to some, but, if \iewed 
rightly, full of hope, — that no new system, 
no change in the economical relations of 
men, will alone bring about a better state 
of society than that which now exists. All 
the world may call itself free, equahty may 
be professed and ordained, property may be 
divided among all; but society will not 
necessarily be improved, the misery of phy- 
sical suifering will not necessarily be done 
away with, nor happiness given to the 
unhappy. 



OBSCURITY. 57 

It has been a remarkable feature in many 
of the most prominent of these schemes for 
social reorganization, that they have been 
developed in a manner so obscure as to be 
unintelHgible in great part to common ap- 
prehension. Instead of appro"vdng them- 
selves at once by the simplicity of their 
statements and the directness of theii' de- 
ductionS; they have repelled sound-thinking 
men by the mystical and affected method of 
their declarations and formulas ; while, from 
the same cause, they have deluded the weak 
and thoughtless, who often fancy that unin- 
telhgibleness is the result and the proof 
of deep superior wisdom. Such was the 
system of St. Simon, impiously named the 
New Christianity (Le Nouveau Christian- 
isme) ; the idea of which, according to its 
author,"^ was the establishment of a new 
rehgion, fitted to unite for one end — under 
the influence of a power endowed at the 
same time 'v\T.th an exquisite sentiment, a 



* Louis Blano. "Histoire de Dix Ans." Bruxelles, 1847. 
Tom. i. p. 392. 



58 SOCIALISM. 

profound science, and an indefatigable acti- 
vity — the artistic, the scientific, and the 
industrial classes ; in other words, all men. 
Such were the series, the harmonies, and the 
attractions of Fourier ; such were the Triad 
and the Ternaries of Pierre Leroux. It 
would be foolishness to detail and dwell on 
such follies, were it not that they have been 
connected with serious realities, and with 
sincere earnestness in the pursuit of human 
advancement. It is well also to consider 
how often extravagance takes the place, and 
assumes the authority and command, of 
truth. 

The truths upon which social science 
rests, like those upon which all other 
science rests, are in themselves simple, and 
fitted to be expressed in plain, intelligible 
words. They are not the possession or the 
discovery of any specially illuminated class. 
The observations which lead to them may 
often be complex, and they may demand the 
highest powers for their investigation; but 
the result from them is always free from 
obscurity. It may task the highest skill to 



EQUALITY. 59 

find out the mystic infiuences of world upon 
world ; but, when these influences are once 
discovered; their universal laws may be 
stated with a precision and clearness open 
to any understanding. So, too, in social 
science. Its study leads through all the in- 
tricacies of men's actions one upon another, 
and through the various infinite relations 
of nature and circumstances toward men; 
but, as these are by degrees unravelled and 
understood, it is more and more plainly seen 
that the final laws which they obey are few 
and simple. 

The first step proposed by these systems 
of reform is, however, easily distinguishable, 
norwithstanding the obscurity which veils 
their details. It is to destroy the inequahty 
which exists among men, and chiefiy the 
inequahty in the distribution of property. 

The inequality in this respect is, as all 
will acknowledge, the immediate source of 
the greatest social srrffering. The contrasts 
between wealth and poverty, between luxuiy 
and misery, are close and terrible. Their 
existence to such a fris^htful desrree is the 



60 SOCIALISM. 

reproach, of our civilization^ of our humanity. 
There is no difference with regard to the 
need of a remedy; the only difference is 
with regard to what the remedy is, and how 
it is to be applied. 

The inequality in the distribution of pro- 
perty arises from two sets of causes : the 
one, the natural created differences in human 
character, and the variety of God's dispen- 
sations to men; the other, the injustice of 
human institutions of past and present times, 
by wliich some men have been favored to 
the disadvantage of others. It is plain that 
the first of these causes are unalterable by 
any human arrangements. It is only the 
second class which can be changed by them. 
But this obvious distinction has been over- 
looked by the popular modern theorists. It 
has been their great and fatal error to pro- 
pose by their systems to alter the action of 
God's laws, and to change the operations of 
the decrees of Divine Wisdom. They have 
attempted to destroy, by an artificial organi- 
zation, the indestructible and unchangeable 
elements of human nature. Their efforts 



DEFINITIONS. 61 

might well have been directed to do away 
with the wrongs which blot the earth; for 
all wrong is to be done away by hnman 
efforts. But they have dashed against the 
wall of God's providence, and their fancies 
have shivered into atoms at the base. 

These schemes are now, for the most part, 
classed together under the general term of 
Socialism. This word, however, although it 
serves as a general term embracing many 
systems, is as yet without any very clear 
signification. Its definitions have been as 
numerous as the writers upon social reform. 
Varying in meaning with the theories wliich 
have been included within its name, it has 
been made to cover many propositions, 
which, if carried to their legitimate conclu- 
sions, would be destructive to all society; 
while, at the same time, it has included 
many principles whose development would 
go far toward removing some of the difficul- 
ties which most impede the progress of the 
world. And from this it happens, that those 
whose position renders them satisfied with 



62 SOCIALISM. 

the existing state of things, look with aver- 
sion and distrust upon all the projects which 
bear the name of Socialism ; while those who 
have nothing to lose in any change, regard 
the word as the indefinite promise of a bet- 
ter state, and cherish too high and too indis- 
criminate a hope. 

Putting aside the consideration of minor 
points, the leading idea which presents itself 
under various modifications, as the ground- 
work of most of the systems of Socialism, is 
that of Association. This principle is asserted 
to be sufficient, when properly understood, to 
produce the desired equality in the circum- 
stances of mankind, and to bring about the 
new condition of society. The principle of 
association itself is no novelty in the world. 
It is as old as the time when two men first 
joined together to accomplish what one alone 
could not efiect. As we examine the whole 
scope of men's relations with each other, we 
see this principle of association in them all. 
No civihzation can exist without it. The 
difference between barbarism and civiliza- 
tion is the difference between more or less 



ASSOCIATION. 63 

association among men. All labor^ com- 
merce, art, literatui-e, and even all languages, 
rest upon this fact of association. 

But, universal as it is, such association as 
the world has known has been insufficient 
to prevent the growth of evils, — it has 
proved often the union of the strong against 
the weak, of force against right, of power 
and violence against Hberty. What, then, is 
the new element in the old principle, or the 
new development given to it, which is to 
unite all men in the pursuit of common 
interests ? 

In one of the numbers of "Le Peuple 
Constituant," ^ the following passage, written 
by the Abbe de Lamennais, is to be found : 

" If by Socialism is meant any one of those 
systems which, since the time of St. Simon 



* At the time of the Revolution of February, the noted 
Abbe de Lamennais, in connection with M. Pascal Duprat, 
established at Paris a daily paper under the above title. For 
a time it had great success ; for Lamennais employed his strik- 
ing and popular style in setting forth doctrines, of which the 
chief was, " The people is every thing ; and from it all justice 
and truth emanate." — Les Journaux Rouges. Paris, 1848, 
p. 120. 



64 SOCIALISM. 

and Fourier; have multiplied everywhere, 
and whose general character is the explicit 
or implicit negation of property and of the 
family relation, — no — we are not Socialists, 
as is well enough known. 

^^ But if by Socialism is meant, on the one 
hand, the principle of association acknow- 
ledged as one of the principal foundations of 
the order which is about to be established, 
and, on the other hand, the firm belief that 
under the immutable conditions of life itself, 
of physical and moral life, this order will 
constitute a new society, to which nothing in 
the past can be compared; — yes — we are 
Socialists, beyond any one else, as shall be 
well seen."^ " In this passage, " association " 
is declared to be one of the foundations of 
the new order j but what is to be understood 
by association is not apparent. 

rive years before, in 1843, the paper 
called "La Eeforme," was established by 
some of the most ardent and sincere Repub- 



* "Les Journaux Rouges," p. 120. 



A PROGRAMME. 65 

licans of Paris, and its programme com- 
mences as follows : — 

"All men are brothers. 

" There, where equality does not exist, liberty- 
is a lie. 

" Society can live only by inequality of apti- 
tudes, and diversity of functions ; but superior 
aptitudes ought not to confer greater rights : 
they impose greater duties. 

" This is the principle of equality : associa- 
tion is its necessary form. 

" The final end of association is to arrive at 
the satisfaction of the intellectual, moral, and 
material wants of all, by the employment of 
their different aptitudes, and the concurrence 
of their efforts." ^' 

Although this is apparently a definition 
of ^^association/' it affords in reality no intel- 
ligible explanation of what is meant by it in 
its new use. Nor is it easy to find anyr^'here 
such an explanation. The idea with which 
the word is now used, and which gives to it 



* " Histoire de la Revolution de 1848, par Daniel Stern." 
" Documents Historiques." p. 277. 



6b SOCIALISM. 

its modern acceptation^ seems^ however, to 
be, that; by carrying the principle of associa- 
tion into all the relations and details of life, 
and by doing away more or less with sepa- 
rate individual action and interests, co-ope- 
ration might be substituted everywhere for 
competition, and the inequalities which 
divide men be done away. This idea, car- 
ried to its farthest conclusion, is Commun- 
ism : modified and varied, it appears in all 
the theories of Socialism. 

Now, there is no one who will deny, that 
to bring about a hearty and loving co-opera- 
tion among men is the end of the purest 
religion. It can be accomplished only by 
the power of religion. To propose to bring 
it about by any system which offers no 
motive but a worldly one, and possesses no 
sanction but a human one, is to propose an 
impossibility. 

Let us attend to a few simple considera- 
tions. The association which is proposed 
must either be voluntarily entered into by 
all, or else some must enter willingly, and 
others only through compulsion. We will 



COMMUNITY. 67 

suppose a case where a whole society should 
voluntarily enter into one great association. 
No one should have any separate cares ; 
all private interests should be consolidated 
into the general interest of the society ; and 
each associate should perform his part for 
the good of all; with no idea of special and 
personal gain. This world does not offer 
a fair place for the trial of such a plan ', nor 
is it possible to suppose such an association, 
composed of human beings. In order that 
it should go on harmoniously^ some of the 
ruling passions of mankind must be blotted 
out from it. It must be a society of beings, 
free from selfishness, ambition, envy, and 
emulation; while a thousand delicate and 
precious portions of human nature must be 
lost in the destruction of individual develop- 
ment. The motives which have been in 
force since the beginning of the world must 
be changed. The only foundation of society 
would be the existence of a sentiment, — a 
foundation too unstable even for a di'eam. 
A bright fancy may picture a glorious and 
happy Icarie, where there are no heavy toils, 



68 SOCIALISM. 

no dividing interests, no injustice among the 
inhabitants; but poor, persecuted, imagi- 
native Cabet finds in Texas or at Nauvoo 
the hard difference between the realities of 
men's intercourse with each other, and the 
illusions of his Icarian speculation. 

But let us suppose a case in which the 
equality in the circumstances of the indivi- 
duals of a society is not positive and abso- 
lute, but in which the association is one only 
of comparative equality. Such a system has 
been summed up by Louis Blanc in a famous 
formula, — 

" From every one according to his aptitudes. 
To every one according to his needs." 

In plainer words, every one shall be 
required to give to the association all that 
his powers of whatever kind enable him to 
give ; and every one shall receive from the 
association all that his wants need for their 
satisfaction. The man with most ability 
shall give most : the man with least ability 
shall receive most. 



OMNISCIENCE. 69 

In the way of such a proposed state as 
this, there seems to be one insurmountable 
difficulty. To distribute to each and to 
demand from each his due proportion, must 
be the work of some authority. No autho^ 
rity but an omniscient one can perform the 
task; — and omniscience does not belong to 
any human authority. Proudhon, who has 
a shrewdness in detecting the fallacies of 
others, which deserts him when he argues 
for his own, asks well in regard to this 
scheme, "Who will make the valuation of 
capacity ? Who will be the judge of wants ? 
You say that my capacity is 100 : I main- 
tain that it is only 90. You add that my 
need is 90 : I affirm that it is 100. We 
differ by 20 as to the need and the capacity. 
Who will judge between the society and 
me ? " If the society, he goes on to say, 
enforces its opinion, I quit it, and the asso- 
ciation ends ; or, if it obliges me to accept 
its judgment and constrains me to remain, 
the principle of fraternity and mutual inte- 
rest, upon which it was founded, is at an 



70 SOCIALISM. 

end."^ Wherever the association is a forced 
one, the relation between the associates is 
that between masters and slaves. 

But there is another difficulty very ob- 
vious in regard to any such arrangement 
of society. It is in its character an arti- 
ficial arrangement; and, in so far as it is 
artificial; it implies its own inefficiency. A 
system not founded on the natural character- 
istics of mankind can be of advantage only 
in peculiar and temporary circumstances. 
It has no universal value. It is not a 
possible system for the world. In an 
association founded on the principle of 
equality, there is no possible guarantee that 
every member shall perform his assigned 
part of the labor. It has been asserted, 
that, in the adaptation of the work to the 
capacity and the inclination of each indi- 
vidual, such a guarantee may be found. 
But this is to answer an objection by a false 
assumption. The work best suited to a 



* " Idee Generale de la Revolution au XIX Siecle. Par 
P. J. Proudhon." Paris, 1851. pp. 101-5. 



CAPACITIES. 71 

man's capacities is not always agreeable to 
Hm. , Nor is there any rule or measure of 
the capacity for, or the value of, different 
kinds of labor. Hard work to one is easy to 
another. A man may be apparently idle, 
and yet may be doing more than any of his 
busier associates. In such a society, it must 
be finally left to the conscience of every one 
to do his part, and the conscience is often a 
very unenlightened, and always a very falli- 
ble counsellor. Judging from experience, it 
must happen that an association of this kind 
would often prove only an encouragement 
to idleness. The least industrious would 
reduce their associates to their own level: 
they would not be raised to the level of their 
better companions. 

In an admirable little pamphlet pubhshed 
by the Marshal Bugeaud in 1848, when 
theoretical fancies of this sort were pro- 
ducing most dangerous effects, an account is 
given of a community estabhshed by himself 
under highly favorable cii'cumstances for its 
success, on this principle of common inter- 
ests and fraternity. The experiment was 



72 



SOCIALISM. 



made in Algeria, and was fairly tried. The 
result was decisive, and lie closes his ac- 
count of it as follows : " Absolute equality 
does not belong to this world. It is God 
himself who has determined this, since he 
has created men so different in power, in 
intelligence, in activity, in inclinations. The 
Socialists, afflicted at seeing misery often at 
the side of ease, and even of riches, pursue 
the chimaera of perfect equality. They 
believe to have found it in association; 
they are deceived ; they will obtain only an 
equality of misery." "^ 

A fixed system of whatever sort that 
attempts to regulate all human relations, and 
to restrict the variety in human circum- 
stances which results from the differences in 
individuals, can only end in a tyranny. A 
partial system of this kind was tried of old 
in Sparta. "The second law," says Plu- 
tarch, " that Lycurgus made, and the boldest 



* " Les Socialistes et le Travail en Commun, Par M. le 
Marechal Bugeaud d' Isly." Paris, 1848. p. 25. 



LACED^MON. 73 

and hardest lie ever took in hand, was the 
making of a new division of their lands. 
For he saw so great a disorder and inequality 
among the inhabitants, as well of the country, 
as of the city Lacedsemon, by reason some 
(and the greatest number of them) were so 
poor that they had not a handful of ground, 
and other some being least in number were 
very rich, that had all : he thought with him- 
self to banish out of the city all insolency, 
envy, covetousness, and deliciousness, and 
also all riches and poverty, which he took for 
the greatest and most continual plagues of a 
city or commonweal. For this purpose he 
imagined there was none so ready and neces- 
sary a mean, as to persuade his citizens to 
suffer all the lands, possessions, and inheri- 
tance of their country to run in common 
together ; and that they should make a new 
division equally in partition among them- 
selves, to live from thenceforth, as it were, 
like brothers together, so that no one were 
richer than another, and none should seek to 
go before each other, any other way than in 
virtue only; thinking there should be no 



74 SOCIALISM. 

difference or inequality among inhabitants of 
one city, but the reproaches of dishonesty, 
and the praises of virtue." ^ The scheme of 
Lycurgus prevailed ; and Plutarch, who gives 
the account of it in full detail, is unable to 
hide under a veil of eulogy, that it was the 
establishment of a most opjDressive domestic 
tyranny, and proved utterly incompatible 
with any rapid progress or high advance in 
civilization. ^^ There is no slavery," said one 
who spoke from experience in our own 
times, — " there is no slavery so hard as com- 
munism in action." t 

Men are not placed in this world to sacri- 
fice their individual characters and interests 
to the fancied advantage of other men, who 
form what is called " Society." The good of 
one man is the good of all. The injury 
of one individual nature, under the pressure 
of an arrangement proposed for the general 



* Plutarcb's Lives. Translated by Sir Thomas North. 
Lycurgus. 

f This was the testimony of one of the Texan Icarians, as 
quoted in " Les Socialistes depuis Fevrier. Par M. Jules 
Breynat." Paris, 1850. p. 197. 



INDIVIDUAL PROGRESS. 75 

good, involves the injury of many, and im- 
plies the defectiveness of the system. The 
true idea of society is a collection of indi- 
viduals, each endowed with a different cha- 
racter, each seeking his own improvement 
after his own manner ; and each, in securing 
his own happiness, jDromoting directly or 
indirectly the good of all within the limit 
of his influence. The impulse coming from 
his own natural inclinations, more or less 
controlled by moral restraint, will be the 
means of securing his constant advance. 
The progress of society is simply the pro- 
gress of the individuals who compose it ; and 
any scheme which rejects the aid of human 
inclinations, or even of human passions, is a 
scheme which rejects one of the chief sources 
of human progress. But, among the desires 
which may be termed natural to men, there 
are few more constant than the desii'e of the 
acquisition of property. The love of pro- 
perty, gained by personal exertion for per- 
sonal use, is of great and unvarying force in 
promoting the development of much of what 
is best in character. Nor is it a low and 



76 SOCIALISM. 

ignoble means for this result. The power 
to do good with one's own possessions, and 
after one's own manner, is a pure motive 
and end of exertion. Property, as it now 
exists, may be wrongly divided ; it may be 
wrongly used ; it may be beyond the attain- 
ment of most men: but a system which 
would destroy individual property is a sys- 
tem which confounds the distinctions be- 
tween good and evil, and would destroy an 
essential good for the purpose of getting rid 
of evils which have no necessary connection 
with it. 

Equality in property, if it could be ob- 
tained, would not secure a general equality 
of condition. Equality in circumstances is 
not possible, even if it were desirable. Fra- 
ternity, the brotherhood of men, must depend 
on their advance in virtue. It is not to be 
gained by any artificial and arbitrary regu- 
lations. It will be the late and gradual 
result of years, perhaps ages, of trial, change, 
and suffering. It will spring not from the 
glowing fancies, but from the deep, hearty, 
religious convictions of mankind. 



SOCIAL PROGEESS. 77 

The subject of social improvement spreads 
like a vast plain in every direction before 
one who enters upon it. But perhaps 
enough has been said to point out the cha- 
racter of the chief errors upon wliich most 
of the schemes of modern Socialism have 
rested. These very errors may be received 
as lessons for the future. They teach the 
necessity of moderation in expectations, in 
desires, in hopes ; of submission to what is 
inevitable ; and of content with partial reme- 
dies, and tardy and imjDerfect results. They 
show that the improvement in the condition 
of men is to proceed, not fi:om hasty changes 
in the constitution of society, but from the 
constant, fresh growth of the good which 
may be found in its present form. Above 
all, they prove that progress can come, not 
from the unaided efforts of human ingenuity 
and strength, but only from those efforts 
helped and supported by the favor of God, 
because undertaken with faith in his over- 
ruling providence, and carried on in con- 
formity with his laws. 



78 SOCIALISM. 

And with this belief we may heartily 
adopt the definition of Socialism, as given 
by one of the bravest of modern social 
reformers. " Socialism/' says Raspail, " is 
the constant and disinterested study of all 
that may serve to ameliorate the moral and 
physical state of human society." ^ 

* " Almanaeh demoeratique et social pour 1849." 



Y. 

CO-OPEEATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 



"Unum debet esse omnibus propositum, ut eadem sit 
utUitas uniuscujusque et universorum." 

Cicero. 



THE preceding section lias shown that 
tlie recent projects of social reform 
havO; in great part; rested upon three mu- 
--tually dependent errors, — those, namely, of 
;. perfect equality among men, of the destriic- 
i tion of individual property, and of universal 
association. It has appeared, that, whether 
regarded in their moral, their political, or 
their economical relations, these ideas are 
equally erroneous. 

These ideas, however, though erroneous, 
are plausible and attractive. Plausible, be- 



80 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

cause tliey are tlie exaggerations of right 
principles and the extravagancies of good 
feeling. Attractive, because they are vague, 
promising largely, and requiring little ; de- 
luding to misery, and flattering to selfishness 
and discontent. They belong to an ideal 
state of society; and perhaps most men 
believe, that, in the attainment of such a 
state, more must be done for them than by 
them. 

But, though universal equality is impos- 
sible and undesirable, though the destruction 
of individual property would be simply the 
destruction of civilization, and though such 
universal association as has been proposed 
would end in universal despotism and stag- 
nation ; yet it is not to be forgotten, that 
there is much unjust inequality to be reme- 
died; that the abuses of property are what 
have chiefly led to the idea of its destruc- 
tion; and that the free association of men 
in the pursuit of their own interests, under 
every different form, is one of the securities 
for progress, which has been often checked 
and hampered with unreasonable restraints. 



EXPERIMENTS. 81 

The only one of these ideas which conld 
from its nature be brought into the field of 
experiment, has, during the few past years 
of revolutionary excitement, received special 
attention and development. In all the 
recent revolutions, " the right of associa- 
tion " has been one of the most prominent 
watchwords of the popular party. Wher- 
ever that party has for any time prevailed, 
this right has been exerted in positive 
action. From association as a theory of 
general reform, associations for special pur- 
poses have arisen. Association, which was 
to unite all mankind, has begun in the 
co-operative associations among workmen 
of the same trade, or the operatives of a 
single workshop ; and in this humbler way 
has shown, and is still shoTvdng, the real 
value of its principle. 

It is the object of the present section 
to inquire into the nature of these experi- 
ments, and the results which they have 
afibrded. 

Association for co-operative purposes is 
obviously of more direct and immediate 
G 



82 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

value to the poor than to the rich; and the 
fresh exhibitions of the principle have been 
almost entirely in associations among the 
laboring classes. Thus far, in the history 
of society, the class of laborers, to use this 
word in its common technical sense, has been 
in a state of comparative dependence. When 
above the condition of slaves, they have, for 
the most part, been obliged to rely upon the 
recompense of their labor for their sole 
support. They have had no reserved means 
to fall back upon when that dependence 
failed. They have lived only by hire, and 
this hire has generally been too small to 
afford much more than the necessities for 
material comfort, and too precarious to give 
leisure or means for the attainment of the 
higher objects of life. It has often been 
insufficient even for the supply of necessity. 
It has seemed as if labor were ill remune- 
rated in proportion to its share in produc- 
tion j as if it stood at a disadvantage with 
the other elements which combine in this 
work. 

Two causes have been pointed out as the 



83 



manifest soTirce of most of this apparent, and 
in many cases real, injustice. The first is 
the weakness of labor as compared with the 
power of capital. Capital consists, in great 
part, of accumulated labor ; and gives power 
to those who possess it, beyond that of the 
many who have only their daily labor for a 
possession. The second cause of the depres- 
sion of labor has been declared to be compe- 
tition, and this principle has been denounced 
as the great enemy of the working classes. 
Its evil influence is experienced not more 
in the competition for profits between the 
employers of labor, which leads them con- 
tinually to reduce the price offered for it 
more and more, than in the competition 
between laborers themselves for labor, or, 
in other words, for the support of life, by 
which they are led to accept wages con- 
stantly decreasing in proportion to their 
increasing want. In dwelling upon the 
evils of competition, many have become 
blind to the fact of its necessary existence, 
and to the good which results from it. 
They have denounced the river whose fer- 



84 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

tilizing stream pours along the rapid cur- 
rent of prosperity, because in its overflow 
it leaves the marks of desolation behind it. 
Instead of building dykes and canals, by 
which this overflow might be prevented, 
they would attempt, as if the thing were 
practicable, to stop its course altogether. 
In denouncing competition, it should be 
well understood, that they denounce buying 
and selling, trade and commerce, and the 
civilization which follows them. The effort 
should be, not that tried by most reformers, 
to get rid of the principle itself, but to get 
rid of the evil connected with it. 

"With the growing intelligence of the 
laboring classes, some of them have come 
to perceive that a union among themselves 
might, if properly organized and conducted, 
be the means of freeing them in some mea- 
sure from the evils of competition ; and that, 
if, in addition to a union of their labor, they 
could unite the small sums of money which 
each might possess or be able to obtain, so 
that many small might form one large sum 
to be used for the common advantage, they 



UNION OF INTERESTS. 85 

■would be relieved from the evil of depend- 
ence upon tlie possessors of capital. They 
now work for wages ; but; understanding 
the course of their trade and possessing the 
necessary capital; why should they not unite 
the parts of workman and master^ and secure, 
in addition to the amount of their wages, the 
master's share of the price received for the 
article of production ? They would reduce 
to action the principle by which " every one 
who contributes to a work, whether by labor 
or pecuniary resources, may have a partner's 
interest in it j)roportionally to the value of 
his contribution." ^ Such a system as this 
they think would be one of obvious justice ; 
and, the interests of each individual being 
bound up with those of all, it would secure, 
so far as the strong motive of self-interest 
prevailed, efficiency of labor and economy of 
materials, in production. By it also con- 
sumers might be brought into direct relations 
with the producers, without the interference 
of any middle class ; and thus, it is said, 

* Mill's " Political Economy," book iv. chap. vii. § 5. 



86 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

economy would be secured to the purchaser, 
and a suitable remuneration to the laborer. 

The attractive character of these doc- 
trines; the truth contained in a portion of 
them; and the plausibility of all; have led to 
their adoption, not only by many of those 
who might expect to be immediately bene- 
fited by their operation; but also by philo- 
sophical inquirers into social and political 
science. The able political economist; Stuart 
Mill; brings forward the principle of making 
the work of production the common concern 
of all; giving to all laborers and emjDloyers 
a partner's interest in it; as the chief means 
of " healing the widening and embittering 
feud between the class of laborers and the 
class of capitalists." ^ The " Christian So- 
cialists;" headed by Kingsley and Maurice ; 
more led by earnest feeling than by sound 
judgment; proclaim the doctrines of co-ope- 
ration as the foundation of a new and Chris- 
tian order of things. 



* "Political Economy," book iv. chap. vii. "On the 
Probable Future of the Laboring Classes," § 6. 



jewellers' lxion. 87 

We are, not wholly without facts which 
may assist us to determine the correctness 
of such anticipations, and the real import- 
ance of co-operative associations to society 
as at present constittuted. 

In France, where all the problems of 
social science have been more studied, and 
where social theories have been more aj)phed 
to the test of experiment, than elsewhere, 
many trials of different schemes of associa- 
tion and co-operative union have been made. 
As early as 1834, an association of jewellers 
was formed in Paris. It was at first a part- 
nership of two individuals ; but the number 
of associates gradually increased to thirteen. 
The chief principle of their association was 
that of mutual confidence, founded on a 
general conformity of sentiments and simi- 
larity of judgment. The members had the 
same rights, and all were under the authority 
of a chief elected from among themselves. 
The salaries or wages were not equal ; and, 
in the yearly division of the j)rofits, each 
associate received a share in j)i'oportion to 
the amount of his annual wa^cs. There 



00 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

was an inalienable and indivisible capital 
contributed by the different members. The 
number of members was increased by the 
election of new associates from among the 
workmen who had been employed for not 
less than six months in the workshops of 
the society. They were not chosen until 
the members had had full experience of 
their good conduct and character, and were 
assured that they held the Roman Catholic 
faith."' This association, which, from its 
long existence and continued prosjDerity (for 
it was at a recent period in prosperous ex- 
istence), has been brought forward by the 
supporters of the system as a proof of the 
good results of co-operation, does not seem 
to differ in any essential respect from a 
common partnership of numerous partners. 
There is certainly nothing in it which can 
be looked to as promising any special ad- 
vantages to the great body of workmen, 



* "Des Associations Guvrieres, par M.Villerme." Paris, 
1849. pp. 4b— 50. 



M. LECLAIRE. 89 

even of a single trade ; and it may be well 
to observe, that; although called an " asso- 
ciation of workmen," it is rather an associa- 
tion of masters, — the united capital of the 
associates enabling them to employ workmen 
who have no share in the profits of the con- 
cern. That an association of this kind, 
estabhshed under favorable cii-cumstances 
and conducted on eq^uitable and sensible 
principles, may secure the comfort and inde- 
pendence of its members, does not admit a 
doubt; but the limits of its usefulness are 
very narrow. 

The establishment of M. Leclaire, a 
house-painter in the Rue St. Georges at 
Paris, has been widely celebrated as a suc- 
cessful experiment of another kind of asso- 
ciation. M. Leclaire, reserving to himself 
the whole direction and management of his 
business, has given to those of his workmen 
who deserved reward for the fidelity and 
excellence of their work a certain annual 
share in the profits of the concern, in addi- 
tion to their regular wages. He has, to tliis 
deo^ree, associated their interests with his 



90 



CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 



own ] and the result has been of advantage 
to himself; as well as to those whom he 
emploj-ed."^ The system is one which might 
well be extended, and from which excellent 
effects might flow; but it hardly deserves 
the name of an association, inasmuch as it 
is an arrangement depending on the will of 
the master alone. However widely similar 
arrangements may be extended in the future, 
they can be ai3phcable only to those trades 
in which apprentices are required, and must 
depend on a peculiar combination of quali- 
ties in the master and the workmen. In 
those circumstances where the good quality 
of labor is not so important as its cheapness, 
an increase of wages must be looked for, if 
it is needed, not from a division of profits 
with the master, but from a general rise in 
the value of labor. Most of the hardest 
work, such as the making of roads, the dig- 



* The account of M. Leclaire's establishment, giren by 
Mr. Mill ("Pol. Econ." book iv. chap. vii. § G), is, in some 
respects, too favorable. Compare with his statements M. 
Leclaire's own account, as quoted by Yillerme, "Des Asso- 
ciations Ouvrieres," p. 44. 



SCHEMES OF 1848. 91 

ging of canals, the gathering of crops, and 
other similar labor, comes within the limit 
of these circumstances. The system may 
be a hel^D : it is no general reliance for the 
future elevation of labor. 

But it was in 1848, when the bridles that 
rein in the wild fancies of men seemed to be 
broken, and when vague desires and strange 
delusions burst into the field of busy prac- 
tical life, that new and hasty experiments 
in associations were tried, and on a wider 
scale than had ever before been attempted. 
The most complex questions in the relations 
of labor were solved by a decree. The 
Revolution was declared to be made in favor 
of the working classes. The gloomy and 
terrible cry of the insurgents at Lyons in 
1834 — " Yivre en travaillant, ou mourir en 
combattant " — was to be inscribed in the 
constitution of the new republic."^ The orga- 
nization of labor was to be its chief object. 
But the measures taken to secure tliis orsra- ' 



* See the speech of Ledru Rollin before the National 
Assembly on the 13 th September. 



92 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

nizatioii; only served to complete the confu- 
sion of the times. No one, who remembers 
the course of those four months from Feb- 
ruary to June, has forgotten the stagnation 
of trade, the suffering of the poor, the alarm 
of the rich ; the weak, conflicting acts of the 
government, driven this way and that by 
the changeable breath of popular feeling; 
the daily increasing mob of ignorant and 
idle workmen, gathered together to receive 
a payment guaranteed by the state ; the sus- 
pense ; and, at last, the bloody civic battle, 
when the roar of the cannon through the 
streets, and the rattle of the musketry, told 
the end of one more false dream of Liberty, 
Equality, and Fraternity. 

During this period, the idea of co-operative 
association as a remedy for old evils was 
spread diligently, and took rapid hold of the 
minds of the laboring classes. The expec- 
tation of freedom from the control of mas- 
* ters, of liberty in work, and of fellowship in 
profits, was well suited to catch the fancy of 
the poor and the indolent. The advantages 
of the plan were brilliant and obvious ; the 



ASSOCIATION OF TAILORS. 93 

difficulties of its application were not easily 
to be seen, and were not of a kind to be 
appreciated by men burning with the fervid 
and unreflecting excitement of the times. 

The first association estabhshed was that 
of the tailors. It was under the direct au- 
spices of government. The Debtors' Prison 
of the Rue de Clichy was given it as a work- 
shop : forty thousand uniforms were ordered 
from it by the state. There was no selection 
of associates. It soon numbered from one 
thousand five hundred to two thousand 
workmen, each receiving two francs a day, 
and all sharing profits or losses equally. 
The hot sun of state favor produced quickly 
a rank, unhealthy growth. It became, from 
an association for labor, one for the discus- 
sion of politics, and fell under the control of 
demagogues. So it went on till the days 
of June. After that time it shrunk in di- 
mensions, went into another workshop, and 
became really an experiment in co-operation. 
As this association was founded under 
the immediate oversight of Louis Blanc, the 
great promoter of the system, and as, not- 



94 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

"vvitlistanding various chances^ it had power 
to subsist, and was very lately still existing, 
it is of importance to note the most promi- 
nent peculiarities of its constitution. It 
appears that it might consist of an unlimited 
number of members. It was governed by 
a Council of Direction annually elected, 
which made all contracts, and represented 
the association towards the public. This 
council occupied the place of a master. 
New members were admitted on the appro- 
val of the council following the recommen- 
dation of two existing members, who were 
obliged to certify that the candidate " unites 
such moral qualities as are indispensable in 
order to form part of an association." The 
profits were divided into thirds : one-third 
was shared by the members in proportion to 
the number of days' work done by each; 
one-third went to the general fund or capi- 
tal ; and one -third to the mutual-relief fund. 
This latter fund was destined to assist sick 
or infirm members ] to aid the widows and 
children of past associates ,* to supply retii*- 
ing pensions to the old, who had been mem- 



ASSOCIATION OF TAILORS. 95 

bers for five years at least ; and, in fine, to 
provide as far as possible for any imperious 
or exceptional wants of the members. Tbe 
distribution of tbis fund was intrusted to a 
"Family Coiuicil/' cbosen by the general 
meeting.^ 

The plaU; of which these are the main 
provisions, offers many features of excel- 
lence ; but it wants any guarantee of suc- 
cess. There is nothing in it to obviate the 
tendency to irregularity in work, to reliance 
on the exertions of others, and to insubor- 
dination among the associates, which must 
necessarily be experienced in the operation 
of such a scheme upon a large scale. Un- 
der favoring circumstances, and with well- 
instructed and few associates, it might serve 
a good purpose. But of the difficulties to 
which in common with other similar plans 
it is exposed, when tried with any wide 
extension, we will take note hereafter. 



* See "Tracts on Christian Socialism. No. IV. The 
Working Associations of Paris." [By J. M. Ludlow, Esq.] 
London, 1850. 



96 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

The popular current; after tlie battle of 
JunC; still set so strongly in favor of associa- 
tions; that; on the 5th of July; the Assembly 
voted a law by which a credit of three mil- 
lions of francs was opened with the Minister 
of Agriculture and Commerce; to be shared 
in the form of loans among associations com- 
posed of workmen simply; or of workmen 
and masters combined. A Council of En- 
couragement; selected by the minister and 
presided over by him; was to regulate the 
conditions of the loanS; to examine the cha- 
racter of the associations demanding assist- 
ance; and to choose from among them those 
most worthy of encouragement. 

The chance of getting money from the 
public treasury added fuel to the flame 
already burning. Speculators and sharpers 
quickly got up mock associations, and sent 
in their claims for assistance. Honest labor- 
ers; hoping to get rich at once by means of 
capital gratuitously aiForded them, formed 
half-concocted schemes; and in good faith 
proposed impracticable companies. In addi- 
tion to these false claims and impossible 



LOAN FKOM THE STATE. 97 

designS; the Council was flooded with peti- 
tions from associations worthy of support. 
They soon found that the labor of examina- 
tion was a very difficult task, and they made 
but slow progress in the distribution of the 
fund. They determined; therefore, in order 
to simplify their work, to arrange two 
models or types of statutes, — one for asso- 
ciations of workmen alone, the other for 
those of master and workmen, — and to re- 
quire the adoption of one set of these rules 
as a step preliminary to the granting of a 
loan. 

The establishment of the loan-fund was 
originally a great error. It could do little 
good in removing difficulties from the way of 
a few associations ; and it could do nothing 
but harm in putting these associations on a 
false footing, giving them unnatural encour- 
agement and an unjust support. It could 
only favor such as might be selected to 
receive any part of it, at the cost and to the 
disadvantage of the vast majority, who could 
receive none ; and such favor was like lifting 
a burden from one shoulder to place it dou- 

H 



98 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

bled in weight upon tlie other. Still, the 
fund being established, it was clearly the 
duty of the Council of Encouragement to 
distribute it in the fairest and freest manner, 
so that its full benefit might be reaped, and 
an unimpeded experiment in the system 
of co-operation be carried out. But the 
Council was composed in great part of men 
little favorable to the idea of association; 
and some of the regulations which they 
enforced seem as if purposely directed to 
restrict the good effects of th'C loan. The 
establishment of two unvarying models for 
the statutes of associations, which must dif- 
fer, not only in the circumstances of their 
foundation, but also in the character of the 
associates, appears, at the first glance, to 
counteract much of the good proposed by 
the loan, and to limit its value as a social 
experiment. It was determined, moreover, 
that loans should be made to associations of 
workmen, only on condition of the unlimited 
liability of each associate for the full amount 
of the loan. For this regulation it is diffi- 
cult to see any justification. Partnerships 



RULES OF THE COUNCIL. 99 

and associations, carried on upon the princi- 
ple of the limited liability of the partners, 
are common and universally understood in 
France. There would be no novelty; as 
in England; in the application of the prin- 
ciple to the proposed societies. The adop- 
tion of the rule of unlimited liability, while 
it afforded little additional security for the 
return of the loan, was virtually an encou- 
ragement of speculation and of reckless asso- 
ciation. iS( honest and thoughtful laborer 
would join a society in which he might 
become liable for more than the earnings 
of his lifetime, and thus run the chance of 
being deprived, through the mistakes or 
dishonesty of his associates, of the little 
gains of years of labor. 

It was, on the other hand, wisely decided 
by the council, that the inequality of wages, 
and of shares in profit, should be carried out 
in all the associations. A gerant or manager 
was to be annually chosen in each, to take 
the place of master, and to be assisted by an 
elected council. 

In regard to profits, a portion, which was 



100 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

on the average forty per cent, was to be re- 
served every year for possible future wants ; 
as, for instance, to cover the losses by bad 
debts, or to purchase new stock. Another 
portion of ten per cent was to be a reserved 
indivisible fund, the proposed object of 
which is not clear. In case of the breaking 
up of the association, this was to fall to the 
government to increase the public fund for 
the encouragement of associations ] or, if this 
fund no longer existed, it was to be applied 
in aid of benevolent institutions for the ame- 
lioration of the working classes. 

Interest was to be charged on the loans 
of the government, at the rate of three per 
cent annually, on sums under 25,000 francs, 
and five per cent on sums above that 
amount. Three-fourths of one per cent was 
to be annually paid to cover the expenses 
of two public inspectors ; and whatever por- 
tion the association might repay, so long as 
it held any capital from government, this 
sum of three-fourths of one per cent was to 
be charged on the full amount of the original 
loan. 



DISTRIBUTION OF THE LOAN. 101 

Notwithstanding the restrictive charac- 
ter of some of these regulations, six hun- 
dred petitions for shares in the fund; from 
associations representing perhaps fifty or 
sixty thousand individuals, were received 
by the Council of Encouragement. It was 
impossible to give to all; and, after consi- 
deration of the claims, 890,500 francs were 
divided among thirty associations in Paris, 
and 1,700,000 were given to twenty-six asso- 
ciations in the departments. The amounts 
of the loans varied from 3,000 to 250,000 
francs. 

Of the associations in Paris, twenty-seven 
were of workmen alone, and three of work- 
men and masters. In the departments, 
eleven were of workmen alone, and fifteen 
of workmen and masters. 

The greater part of the loans were made 
in the first six months of 1849. The suc- 
ceeding year was one in which all trade was 
recovering from the blow of 1848, and was 
a period of considerable commercial activity 
and success. The associations, however, do 
not seem to have shared in the general 



102 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

prosperity. After a year, eighteen of them, 
representing 589,000 francs of the loan, had 
ceased to exist. The causes of failure were 
various: sometimes there was a complete 
abandonment of the society by all the asso- 
ciates; sometimes there was fraud on the 
part of one; there were mistakes on the 
part of the managers; there was want of 
work; and sometimes there was dissatisfac- 
tion among the associates with each other, 
or with the conditions of the loan, or, in 
general, with the whole system. 

There were in many instances, both among 
the associations that were broken up in the 
first year, and among those which still con- 
tinued to exist, constant changes in the 
management, with great internal confusion 
and many difficulties. Out of the thirty 
formed in Paris, only four were successful in 
obtaining private credit, in addition to that 
which they had obtained from the govern- 
ment. In the departments, not a single 
association of the workmen obtained loans 
of money from private individuals. 

One of the inspectors of the finances of 



REPORTS OF INSPECTORS. 103 

the associations in the departments; wrote : 
" It does not appear^ in general; that the 
workmen have taken the association seri- 
onsly; or that they have acted as if interested 
in it; by bringing to their labors more 
activity and care since it was formed; for 
the products are neither more abundant nor 
of better quality." This is the tone of many 
of the reports. OtherS; however; speak of 
the zeal, the patience; and the improved 
character of the workmen under the new 
system. Both representations were undoubt- 
edly correct. 

In July; 1852; but seven or eight of the 
associations in Paris; and but ^Ye or six of 
those in the departments; continued to exist. 
It is especially to be noticed; that; duiing 
the whole period since 1849; France has 
been enjoying a season of prosperity and of 
activity in her trades and manufactures."^ 



* The account given above of these associations is abridged 
from a "Memoire sur les Associations fondees avec une Sub- 
vention de I'Etat. Par M. Louis Reybaud." It is to be 
found in the " Compte Rendu de I'Acadeuiie des Sciences 
Morales. Juillet et Aout, 1852." M. Reybaud,, the well- 



104 



CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 



But; besides these associations^ which re- 
ceived aid from the government, there 
sprang up in Paris many others, which were 
entirely dependent on the exertions of their 
members. Their characters and objects 
were extremely various. Some embraced 
only a few members, while others were com- 
posed of hundreds of associates. Almost 
all were designated as "Associations Frater- 
nelles ; " and between many of them a sys- 
tem of mutual aid was established, by which 
each association was bound, as far as possi- 
ble, to give preference in all dealings, to the 
other associations. Thus an associated shoe- 
maker was to employ an associated washer- 
woman to wash his linen, and she in return 
was to get her shoes from the shoemakers' 
association,- and, while she washed at a 
cheaper rate for the shoemaker, he, on the 
other hand, was to supply her with cheaper 



known author of « Jerome Paturot," was one of the members 
of the Council of Encouragement. He has given further de- 
tails, in regard to the workings of these and other associations, 
in the " Compte-Rendu " for JSJovember and December, 1852. 



ASSOCIATIONS FRATERXELLES. 105 

shoes tlian she coiikl get elsewhere. The 
preamhle to the regulations of the associated 
masons and stone-cutters set forth; " that 
they had resolved to form an association^ 
and to unite their interests, in order, by this 
means, to j)roceed towards the end of hu- 
manity, — universal brotherhood." ^ And, 
in general, in regard to the associations, 
there was too much of this cant about 
brotherhood and equality, — a cant difficult 
to be borne with, since it tends to bring 
into disrepute the noblest principles, and to 
weaken their authority over the world. 

In some trades, two or more rival associa- 
tions were formed," and it did not appear 
that the principle upon which they were 
formed was able to extinguish a disastrous 
competition. In other trades, single indi- 
viduals set up the sign of " Fraternal Asso- 
ciation," in the hope of reaping some little 
gain from increase of custom. Some of the 
associations, however, included more than 



* "Tracts on Christian Socialism," No. IV. p. IG. 



106 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

half of all the workmen in a trade : that of 
the hatters, for example, was said, at one 
time to embrace nine hundred out of the 
fourteen hundred hatters of Paris. "^^ Most 
of these co-operative societies commenced 
upon the system of complete equality of 
wages and profits; but very few continued 
it after a short experience, for it was found 
that either equality or association must be 
given up. 

One regulation, which appears in different 
forms in the rules of many of the societies, 
deserves particular attention. It is that 
with regard to the qualifications of candi- 
dates for membership. The standard of 
qualification varied; but it seems always to 
have been necessary to fix some standard. 
Among the masons, two members must 
" guarantee the morality and laborious habits 
of the candidate." t Into the association of 
workers in leather and skins no member 
was to be admitted, unless he were a good 



* "Villcrme. Des Associations Ouvrieres." p. 82. 
t " Tracts on Christian Socialism," No. IV. p. 15. 



ALARM IN 1848. 107 

workman in his own line, and paid into tlie 
general fund, either in money, tools, or 
materials, the sum of a hundred francs."^ 
Such examples as these might be multiplied, 
but a few serve to show the character of the 
whole. 

At one time, toward the end of 1848, 
these associations became so numerous as to 
give cause for serious alarm, lest the course 
of trade in Paris should be disturbed, and 
lest, uniting under a general head, they 
might assume the character of a great poli- 
tical organization. But their number de- 
creased as their novelty wore off, and the 
alarm diminished as rapidly as it had grown. 
Since then, there have been fluctuations in 
their numbers and in their success. Many 
still exist, and some are said to be pros- 
perous. But it is difficult to obtain any 
trustworthy accounts of their condition.f 



* "Tracts on Christian Socialism," No. IV. p. 16. 

f In April, 1852, there were a hundred and ninety-seven 
■working-men's associations in Paris. See " Edinburgh Re- 
view," No. CXCIV. p. 439. 



108 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

In England the experiment of such asso- 
ciations^ as a remedy for the evils of the 
system of competition^ is being tried; at the 
present time^ in various quarters^ and with 
various means. The founders of " Christian 
Socialism/' as it is called; have promoted the 
establishment of working-men's associations 
in London; in the hope that these societies 
may afford some permanent relief to the 
present evils in the working-men's condition. 
The first opened was that of the tailors. It 
commenced in January, 1850; and was re- 
cently in what was said to be a flourishing 
condition. Other similar associations have 
sprung up since ; but they are all of some- 
what forced growth; supported carefully by 
the aid of friends; and kept much in the 
light and heat of notoriety. Nor is this to 
be considered undesirable. For the sake of 
human progress; if the ]3lan is good; if it can 
remove or relieve the evils under which so 
many laborers suifer; let it have all the aid; 
all the encouragement; all the carC; which 
the most assiduous watchfulness can bestow ; 
but let it be understood; that; under such 



SPECIAL ACT. 109 

guardianship, present success is no proof of 
its universal or future value. 

Till within a very recent period; all such 
associations in England have labored under 
great difficulties on account of the restrictive 
character of the laws of partnership ', but, 
during the year 1852, co-operative associa- 
tions received the benefit of a special act, 
and many now enter upon a rapid coiu'se 
of development."^ There have already been 
formed some estabhshments conducted upon 
the system of M. Leclaire, and some co- 
operative stores have been organized similar 
to those not uncommon in some parts of our 
own country, supported by working-men to 
supply themselves with good articles at fair 
prices, and to divide among themselves the 
profits that may accrue from the undertaking. 
There seems now no reason why similar 
institutions should not be widely extended 
thi'oughout England, if their operation is 
found to be beneficial. 



* This act is entitled " Industrial and Provident Societies 
Act." It will enable working-men " to work together with 
every fair facility." 



110 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

Such are some of the facts respecting past 
and existing co-operative associations. Two 
different sets of conclusions may be drawn 
from them ; one favorable, the other adverse, 
to the system. The societies have not had 
such success as to prove the fallacy of the 
views of those who regard them as attempt- 
ing impossibilities, nor have they met with 
such failures as to lead their supporters to 
distrust their final prevalence. The experi- 
ment is but half tried. It must go on for 
a long period before its result can be com- 
pletely known. But, though this be the 
case, there are certain points already ascer- 
tained, and some general considerations to be 
attended to, in forming an opinion with 
respect to the final question, — the power of 
these associations to improve the condition 
of the laboring class. 

In the first place, then, it would appear that 
the advocates of co-operation claim too much 
in putting it forward as the chief means to 
remedy the evils of the laborer's condition, be- 
cause these evils are dependent in great part 
upon moral and physical causes, on which 



LIMIT OF POWER. Ill 

association, however extended, can have only 
an indirect effect. Moreover, almost every 
man desires freedom in the j)nrsuit of Hs own 
interests. This desii'e is not extinct among 
the poor : a poor man desires to feel that he 
has the power to exercise his individual will. 
It is true that you may be able to prove, that 
in association his interest would be promoted, 
and that the voluntary joining the society is 
an exercise of his fi-ee will ', but not every 
man is capable of understanding a demon- 
stration; and to suppose the poorest and 
most distressed laborers intelligent enough 
to see their own interest, and self-controlled 
enough to follow it, is to suppose what does 
not exist. A formal, preconcerted plan for 
the improvement of society must invariably 
fail in a universal application. A small por- 
tion of the needy may be succored by it: 
the majority will not find any help in it. 
The scheme of co-operative association is 
expressly adapted to the better and more 
intelligent class of workmen. It appears 
from the past experience, that, to secure 
success, the associates must submit to a 



112 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

complex and stringent code of regulations, 
and that they must be bound together by a 
moral as well as a social' or industrial tie. 
ISToWj all this goes to render such associations 
exclusive in their character. The most idle, 
immoral, and ignorant, that is, the portion 
of the laboring classes most needing to 
be elevated, are left out or kept out. We 
have seen the regulations to this effect 
among the Parisian associations. The second 
article of the fourth chapter of the Code of 
Laws for an Association, published by the 
promoters of Christian Socialism, relates to 
candidates for admission, and reads as fol- 
lows : " He must be of good reputation and 
a competent workman." Mr. Babbage, who 
has very ably stated the advantages which 
might result from the extension of the 
principle of association to manufacturing 
industry, expressly refers to the small capi- 
talists, and the higher class of workmen, as 
those to whom the matter is of chief impor- 
tance. Indeed he says : " None but work- 
men of high character and quahfications 
could obtain admission into such estabhsh- 



LIMIT OF SUCCESS. 113 

ments." "^ The success of the association of 
working jewellers in Paris has depended 
on this fact. It has been an association of 
picked men; a partnership^ and nothing 
morC; between its members. M. Leclaire 
made his successful experiment (which, as 
we have seen, is hardly to be called an 
experiment in association) by rewarding his 
best workmen with a share in his gains. It 
is, undoubtedly, a very desirable and excel- 
lent thing to increase the wages and to 
extend the prospects of the higher class of 
laborers, — and indirectly, this is a great 
good for those lower in the scale, — but 
until it shall be shown that association may 
be applied with immediate advantage to the 
needs of the majority of laborers, till then, 
it cannot claim to be the most important 
means for the elevation of the working 
classes.f 



* "Economy of Machinery and Manufactures." Third 
edition, chap, xxvi., quoted in Mill, book iv. chap. vii. 

t In the first Report of the Society for promoting Working 
Men's Associations, published at the close of 1852 in London, 
occurs the following passage : " The Society has for some time 



114 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

Even within the narrow limits by which 
its application in the present condition of 
society must be confined; the operation of 
the principle of association does not seem to 
be a complete remedy for the e^ils against 
which it is directed. Co-operation is de- 
clared to be the substitute for competition; 
and to be able to prevent the evils which are 
attributed to unrestrained rivalry in trade. 
But it does not appear evident how this 
result is to be effected. If all the laborers 
in a trade were to unite in one association; 



past determined to discourage advances of money to bodies of 
working-men about to start in association, unless they have 
first shown some sign of preparedness for the change from 
their old life, and have subscribed some funds of their own. 
This has been done, because it has been found very necessary 
to have some proof that men have foresight and self-denial 
before they should be encouraged to associate. Working- 
men in general are not fit for association. They come into it 
with the idea that it is to fill their pockets and lighten their 
work at once, and that every man in an association is to be 
his own master. They find their mistake in the first month 
or two, and then set to quarrelling with everybody connected 
with the association, but more especially with their manager; 
and, after much bad blood has been roused, the associa- 
tion breaks up insolvent, or has to be re-formed under very 
stringent rules, and after the expulsion of the refractory 
members." 



CO-OPERATIVE COMPETITION. 115 

or in many under one directing head; the 
end would indeed be gained. But there are 
few trades in which this is possible, even for 
a single country; and it must be supposed, 
in order to compass in this manner the 
destruction of the evils of competition, that 
there would be no struggles for superiority 
between different countries, or that associated 
industry would so prevail as to drive out all 
other from the field. Now, neither of these 
events can be anticipated. But, even sup- 
posing that all trades should be carried on 
everywhere by associations, what is there to 
prevent these associations from competing 
with each other as separate individuals ? 
Absolutely nothing : on the contrary, com- 
petition must exist then as it does now. A 
plan for organizing labor, of whatever kind 
it may be, will never put a stop to competi- 
tion. Association may help to control it. 
It will not necessarily by itself succeed in 
doing so. 

There is a danger also attending the pre- 
sent schemes of associations, which demands 
careful watch. It is that, unless they are 



116 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

established with great care, they may prove 
the means of shifting misery from one set of 
men upon another. This clanger lies imme- 
diately before those associations which are 
commenced where population is crowded, 
and there are more laborers than labor. 
For instance, there are in the great cities 
many hands waiting, ready to seize the 
veriest crumbs of wages. Take fifty men 
from the workroom of a sweater, and form 
them into an association, — they may be 
relieved, but they will have only made room 
for fifty others, eager for their miserable 
places. And if the association succeeds, if 
its competition is found to be disastrous by 
the master, his new laborers will suffer for 
the success of the old. 

There is yet another point. In some 
trades, the combination of the offices of mas- 
ter and man, and the union of the general 
management with the business of the work- 
man, may be of advantage in securing eco- 
nomy and efficiency of production. But 
interfering as this union does, more or less, 
with that division of occupation which the 



DIVISION OF DUTIES. 117 

experience of all times and all countries lias 
agreed in treating as the means of obtaining 
those advantages, it is hardly to be expected 
that this combination should be found to be 
usually attended with gain. To secure the 
good of the various classes of those engaged 
in work; their occupations should be brought 
into a harmonious combination, not forced 
into an artificial amalgamation. Diversity 
of occupation does not imply diversity of 
interests. "^ 

Wliile these prominent difficulties lie in 
the way of the realization of the large hopes 
of those who expect most from co-operative 
associations, there is, however, but little to 
be feared, and much to be hoped, from the 
progress and multiplication of these societies. 
The hindrances which they must overcome 
are such that they are not likely to succeed, 
except where the advantages derived from 
them are positive and practicable. So far 



* See article by Mr. Greg, on "Investments for the 
Working Classes." Edinbxirgli Review, No. CXCIV., April, 
1852. p. 452. 



118 CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

as they extend, they will be the means of 
spreading the virtues of self-control and 
self-reliance. Modified as they may be to 
suit various needs and capacities, they may 
more or less escape the objections which 
lie against them in theory. The more men 
associate together for the sake of their inte- 
rests, the more are they likely to associate 
from higher motives and for generous ends. 
Associations are one of the means — not 
the chief, not the most effective nor most 
desii-able — for the elevation of the laboring 
poor; but still a means to that end, and as 
such not to be slighted. We have seen 
that they are now of most advantage to the 
highest class of workmen, — to the most 
intelHgent and the most virtuous. Their 
influence may thus be beneficial in stimu- 
lating the formation of good habits among 
all. And this very limit to their immediate 
usefulness points out the most dii'ect object 
of exertion for those who would take their 
part in social progress. It is the education 
of the poorer classes. Educate them, and 
they will then associate if they need; and 



EDUCATION. 119 

association will carry on their education. 
Make them beings capable of understanding 
their own interests, and desirous to promote 
those of others. The first duty; the first 
necessity, is to help them to gain possession 
of their intellectual and moral natures. Till 
this is attained, liberty, fraternity, equality, 
association, are impossible. Then will labor 
be honored and rewarded as it ought; and, 
till then, no organization whatever will avail 
to secure its due regard. Education is the 
hope for the future of the laborer. 



Note to Page 94. — It appears from M. Reybaud's paper 
in the " Compte-Rendu " for November and December, 1852, 
that the constitution of the association of tailors underwent 
some modification after the removal from the Rue de Clichy. 
The most important change appears to have been that the- 
members gave up the idea of equality in wages, and were paid 
for their work by the piece. 



VI. 

THE FUTURE. 



"The progress of mankind is like the incoming of the tide, 
which, for any given moment, is almost as much of a retreat 
as of an advance; but still the tide moves on." 

Feiends in Council. 

THE difficulty of forming a true estimate 
of the character and tendency of one's 
own times has increased in proportion to 
the rapid development of modern civiliza- 
tion. With the opening of new interests^ 
the exploring of wider fields of knowledge, 
the estabhshing of more complex relations 
among men, and with the growth of new 
modes of thought and action, it becomes 
continually greater. The considerations 
which were formerly bounded by a sino-le 



KNOWLEDGE OF AN AGE. 121 

country, or by a regard to one or two neigh- 
boring states, bave now to embrace the wide 
extent of the world. ^"To obtain a correct 
judgment of an age," said Count Joseph de 
Maistre, ^-we must take into account, not 
only its knowledge, but its ignorance." Nor 
is this all : we must also estimate aright how 
long before its knowledge will become com- 
parative ignorance, and how long before its 
ignorance will be transmuted or dispersed. 
It is this difficulty, in understanding the 
present and in discerning the futiu*e, which 
gives to the affairs of nations so much of the 
appearance of a game of chance played by 
unskilful hands, and which invests them with 
a certain sadly humorous character. The 
nicest speculations, the finest anticipations, 
are overset by some utterly misunderstood or 
unexpected cii'cumstance. The careful plans 
of statesmen, the projects from whose suc- 
cess they had looked for fame, the objects of 
their ambition, the alHances made with infi- 
nite trouble and elaborate detail, one after 
another break with a breath, and leave 
scarcely a trace behind. And tilings far 



122 THE FUTURE. 

deeper and more important than these — 
matters upon which progress or decline de- 
pend, on which the welfare of whole future 
generations hang — are scarcely noticed, till, 
rising from a little speck in the horizon, 
they have become the cloud that covers the 
heavens. 

There is, indeed, no prevision by which 
the distant special results from any course 
of policy may be foreseen, and but little 
wisdom sufficient to trace even its immediate 
consequences with much accuracy. But, 
while the special consequences are in the 
dark to us, it is to be remembered that 
with the progress of civilization we have 
made progress in the knowledge of those 
laws by which the general results from any 
course of human action are determined and 
guided. With extending experience comes 
extended acquaintance with these over-rul- 
ing and universal truths. For experience 
enlarges, repeats, renews, her familiar teach- 
ings : she never falsifies or alters them. 
Good follows good; bad always comes close 
upon bad ; and our gain fi'om larger experi- 



NEGLECT OF EXPERIENCE. 123 

ence is, that with, slow, uncertain^ but con- 
tinually firmer hand; we are enabled to 
unweave the tangle of bad and good; to 
discriminate between them more closely and 
delicately ; and at last; out of the confusion; 
the complexity; and the changing appear- 
ances; to form a judgment which shall not 
be far distant from the truth. 

The bitterest part of history, the part on 
which succeeding years look with most con- 
tempt and pity; is that which is rendered 
gloomy by deeds committed in neglect or in 
denial of these truths established by expe- 
rience. It is because this denial or neglect 
springs ofteU; not so much from ignorance 
as from selfishness ; because it is found, not 
alonC; where it might be expected; among 
the poor; the miserable; and the unfortunate ; 
but among the rich; the powerful; and the 
prosperous. Sometimes, for long series of 
yearS; it appears as if a government or a 
nation had recklessly committed themselves 
to an audacious disregard of the stern warn- 
ings of the past, of every sign of danger in 
the future ; but never yet did such nation 



124 



THE FUTURE. 



or government escape the crash of final 
retribution. 

The present miserable state of the conti- 
nent of Europe is the natural result of the 
past. Severe as the instruction which our 
own and the preceding generation has re- 
ceived, the lessons still seem to be but half 
understood. The violence which has de- 
faced country after country, —the successive 
warS; insurrections, discontents, struggles, 
successes, defeats, have brought about a 
state of affairs which affords almost as Httle 
promise of better results, and seems as little 
likely to be permanent, as any that has pre- 
ceded it. Everywhere prevail discontent, 
anxiety, and uncertainty. Nowhere is any 
confidence of stability. Austria and Prussia 
lie insecure, though hemmed in and tra- 
versed by a glittering network of bayonets. 
France, weary of change, seeks quiet for 
a season, even though it be the quiet of a 
despotism. Spain, too distracted, too feeble 
for effort, is apparently dragging out an- 
other century of civil discord and religious 
bigotry. Italy, goaded to madness, takes 



CENTRALIZATION. 125 

refuge from the violated oaths and the dun- 
geons of a Bourbon king, or the lash and 
the fines of an Austrian goyernor; in drunken 
attempts at insurrection, and hopeless appeals 
to her people for union amongst themselves. 
There is not a government which rests upon 
any more substantial foundation than that of 
force ] and such a foundation, though it may 
seem enduring, has no strength to resist the 
slow advancing tide of change. 

The system of centrahzation, which has 
interwoven itself into the policy of every 
great continental state, forms the complete 
embodiment of the idea of monarchial abso- 
lutism. It is Louis XIYth's famous maxim 
reduced to practice ; it is the doctrine of the 
Catholic chui'ch in rehgion apphed to poli- 
tics. And, while this system remains in 
force, — while all authority and office are 
derived from the monarch, — while educa- 
tion, religion, trades, social and even domes- 
tic affairs, are regulated by the head of the 
state, there can be neither permanent con- 
tentment, nor immediate prospect of any 
government but a despotic one. The peo- 



126 THE FUTURE. 

pie are unfitted by such a system for self- 
government ; they have learned from it to 
rely upon another power than their own, — 
to seek for aid from the state, instead of 
to help themselves : they have been taught 
dependence, and cannot at once spring to 
independence. It is this that gives one of 
its sombrest tints to the future. 

The cruelties in Naples, the tyranny in 
Lombardy and Hungary, the deportations to 
Cayenne, are the fruitful seeds of revolt and 
red republicanism. Every act of injustice 
perpetrated by the officers of the existing 
governments is an appeal against them, and 
an appeal which in time will be answered. 
The wind that is sown will be reaped the 
whirlwind. Europe appears scarcely to 
have begun her period of trouble. It re- 
quires no prophet to foretell the sufferings 
and struggles to come, — not in our time 
perhaps, but before the balance will be made 
even, and power in the one scale swing level 
with right in the other. And if the time 
shall come when the existing state of tilings 
shall be overthrown ; when — 



SUFFERINGS TO COME. 127 

" Sceptre and crown 
Shall tumble down. 
And in the dust be equal made 
With the poor crooked scythe and spade," — 

it is then that the worst evils of present 
tyranny will appear; it is then that the 
tyranny of kings will for a time he paral- 
leled in the tyranny of peoples ] centraliza- 
tion will bear its legitimate fruits ; and the 
people; long constrained^ as if unworthy of 
confidence, will show that such constraint 
but made them what was feared. It may 
be said such a picture is too dark; but it 
is only the reflection of the present reahty. 

It may be — God grant that it may be ! — 
that, without violent convulsions, but gra- 
dually, under wise guidance and prudent 
counsels, by the judgment, the honor, the 
devotion of the rulers of the continental 
states, the nations may be led to and helped 
along the way of steady, true improvement ; 
that improvement may come from foresight 
and wisdom, and not be gained from the 
bitter experience of suffering ; that, by de- 
grees, one abuse after another may be done 



128 



THE FUTURE. 



awayj that unjust privileges may be abo- 
lished* and that equal opportunities for 
obtaining those advantages which should be 
common to all may be universally enjoyed. 
But; at the present moment, few signs are 
apparent which can afford a reasonable hope 
that this is to be the near history of the 
future. The great weight of rank and power 
is against it. It is only at scattered points, 
and with broken efforts, that wise, earnest, 
but feeble individuals are striving with the 
vast difficulties which close around them, 
and spending every exertion to open a 
brighter prospect. 

England is the single great country of 
Europe, where, notwithstanding many ob- 
stacles in the way of healthy advance, 

obstacles which elsewhere might be con- 
sidered almost insurmountable, — there is 
ground for hoping that necessary reforms 
may be made, and a coui'se of improvement 
pursued, without violence and without sud- 
den and alarming alterations. There can 
be little doubt that the need of progress, 
of satisfying the changing demands of the 



IGNORANCE IN ENGLAND. 129 

times, is a need so mdely felt, that it will be 
fairly met ', and the example of some among 
her great statesmen in the past may well 
inspire confidence for the future. There 
are great dangers before her. Beyond all 
others is that which arises from the igno- 
rance of the mass of her people, — an igno- 
rance which is the disgrace as well as the 
danger of the land. The separation of 
classes is aggravated by it, so that success 
and splendor themselves become appeals to 
revolution, and testimonies to the wrong 
which is permitted in the midst of such 
prosperity and enlightenment. The church, 
whose bigotry throws clogs in the way of 
education; the rich, whose carelessness ne- 
glects it; the aristocracy, whose selfishness 
keeps it for themselves, shutting it up from 
others, — are the enemies who are sapping 
the strength, and blighting the hope, of 
their country. The destitution and physical 
suffering which exist side by side with fabu- 
lous wealth and modern luxury, derive their 
existence, in great part, from this source. 
They are to be removed, and the classes 

K 



130 THE FUTURE. 

called dangerouS; because they are destitute, 
brought back to civilization and comfort, by- 
dispelling the ignorance, not only of the 
poor, but the ignorance of the upper classes, 
which prevents them from seeing that their 
interest, as well as their duty, is in this 
work. 

The prospect before our own country, 
bright as it is on many sides, opening before 
the view the noblest field of progress, is yet 
darkened by some threatening clouds. The 
prosperity that we have enjoyed may con- 
tinue, and may extend with every year. 
But the rapid gains in material wealth which 
have been made during late years ; the new 
fields of adventure, enterprise, and specu- 
lation, which have been opened, have given 
to the period a character of haste and excite- 
ment which leads to inconsiderateness and 
irreflection. It is time to pause, to draw 
breath at least, and look around to see 
whither we are hurrying. It is for us to 
remember that national prosperity depends 
on national character, and that long-conti- 
nued prosperity may have the efiect of 



AMERICAN DECLAMATION. 131 

weakening and of finally depraving that 
character. The popular declamation of the 
present day — the talk about " manifest des- 
tiny/' "natural boundaries," "geographical 
extension/' and such other topics — is one 
sign that this effect has already been in part 
produced. There is no such thing as des- 
tiny in the affairs of a nation. The fate of 
every nation depends, under God, upon its 
own acts ', and if its acts partake of that 
wild, reckless, and unprincipled spirit which 
such language indicates, its fate is no longer 
uncertain. Strength may be diminished, and 
prosperity decreased, by unwieldy stretch of 
territory. The natural boundaries of a coun- 
try are those, wider or narrower, within 
which the people may be best governed; 
and if to increase in territorial size is to 
diminish the chance of good government, 
then that nation is suicidal which chooses 
to add land to land, and state to state. The 
principle of self-government will not allow 
this to be done with safety, for the power of 
self-government is not to be intrusted to the 
whole human race. The half-savas^e descen- 



132 



THE FUTURE. 



dants of the Spanish conquerors and the 
conquered natives of America are no fit 
depositaries of this power ; the semi-civilized 
people of the Sandwich Islands are little 
worthy to be trusted with it. 

But within our existing borders there are 
questions whose solution is pressing upon 
us. The great difficulties are those of so 
dealing with slavery as to bring good out of 
evil ] and of so providing education for the 
poorer classes, that the destruction of the 
experiment of republicanism, which is here 
beng tried on a scale commensurate with its 
importance, shall not be brought about by the 
ignorance of a portion of our own citizens. 

These questions are too complex to be 
entered upon here. 

The view we have now presented would 
be incomplete, without the addition of an- 
other series of considerations. 

Amid all the disquietude and disap- 
pointments of our times, through the con- 
fusion and changes of the actual state of 
society, a clear view may yet discern the 



GRADUAL PROGRESS. 133 

signs of the gradual progress of the world. 
Notwithstanding the re-establishment of old 
and worn-out forms, and the re-assertion of 
old creeds; — notwithstanding the immense 
distance between the actual state of men and 
their possible condition, it requires but little 
wisdom to see that evils are being one by 
one weakened and done away. It is not 
any ten years which will show this, — hardly 
any fifty ; but the comparison between one 
century and another will bring the truth 
plainly into sight. It is, indeed, true that 
the signs of apparent progress, upon which 
congratulation has been founded, have 
proved, in many instances, fallacious. The 
greatest and most rapid conquests over phy- 
sical powers, unbounded gains in material 
wealth and in knowledge, have turned out to 
be no sure reliance for real improvement in 
what is most important. Time and again 
the conviction has been re-enforced, that 
even the possession of wisdom, and the de- 
sire to establish the truth and the right, may 
exist side by side with folly, falsehood, and 
wrong, and be unable to restrain and control 



134 



THE FUTURE. 



them. If, then, in view of this, it should 
seem at any time doubtful whether the world 
is in fact making advance, — if to our dim 
eyes there should appear no progress, we 
may still believe that it is our dulness of 
vision alone which creates the apparent 
darkness J remembering that, spite of all 
human opposition, and through passages 
inexplicable to human powers, the course 
of the world is guided by a Divine Pro- 
vidence whose ways are not as our ways. 
Our faith is worthless, unless it rests too 
firmly to be overthrown by our ignorance 
or our disappointments. Because we are 
in a dark room, we do not deny the sun ; 
and, though the whole earth should seem to 
us to stand still, it is for us to say, knowing 
our own ignorance, " E pur si muove," — 
Yet it does move. 

Believing, then, in this gradual improve- 
ment, we must necessarily also believe, that 
to promote or impede it depends upon each 
present generation; that is, upon ourselves. 
The uncertainty which rests over the future 
is sufficient ground for our concern with it. 



STRUGGLE FOR GOOD. 135 

Its events cannot be foreseen ; but they are 
greatly witbin the control of men for good 
or for evil. The ideal state which lies be- 
fore us — the highest good that we can 
conceive to be attainable by human effort — 
is the limit for out exertion. Slowly the 
hmit now visible is to be gained ; but, with 
each step; a farther limit rises. The very 
upheaving of society in these days, — the 
questionings of established things, the wild 
social theories, the ready proselytes of every 
new scheme, are all, from this point of \dew, 
encouraging signs. They show the desire 
and struggle for something better than the 
present affords. Misdirected gropings they 
may be ; efforts leading backwards, rather 
than forwards, many of them are ; but still 
gropings and efforts after good. '' Every- 
where," says Guizot, in a fine passage, — 
" everywhere the moral thought of men rises 
and aspires very much above their lives. 
And take care how you believe, that, be- 
cause it does not immediately govern their 
actions, and because practice incessantly and 
strangely gives the lie to theory, this moral 



136 THE FUTURE. 

thought is null and of no value. It is much, 
as the judgment of men upon human actions : 
sooner or later it will become efficacious." 

In the endeavor after social progress, there 
is one quality, of which every man who de- 
sires to be of use must attempt to possess 
himself: it is the quality of patience.- It 
is rarely found among those who call them- 
selves social reformers, and seems to be fully 
possessed only by the noblest and most un- 
selfish men. The men who labor for their 
own immediate gain can hardly acquire it; 
and it is only from those who devote them- 
selves honestly to the service of God, by 
serving others, that its exercise may be 
expected. There is a natural tendency 
among men, chiefly from want of imagina- 
tion, to forget the very small proportion 
which any one generation bears to the long 
succession of centuries, and hence to look 
for too great results in too brief a time. The 
social speculations which we have already 
considered have been in nothing more extra- 
vagant than in the expectation upon which 



INJURIOUS HASTE. 137 

many o£ tliem were founded; that their adop- 
tion was to produce an instant change, by 
which the world should be set right. But 
moral progress must, under any circum- 
stances; be very slow. Nor is there any 
thing more opposed to real advance than 
hasty attempts to secure it. Such attempts 
are universally measured by external signs, 
and may for a time wear a deceitful look, 
— the result of excitement and enthusiasm. 
But, as these pass away, as the stern, solid 
difEculties one by one appear, the reaction 
of disappointed hopes and anticipations 
sweeps back with a damaging and disastrous 
wave. Impatience of an old wrong is apt 
to mislead into the commission of a new 
one. We are apt to forget that an evil is 
often very apparent, while the means of 
doing away with it, without creating other 
evils in its stead, lie hidden in the con- 
fusion of conflicting rights. With almost 
every social wrong some social right is in- 
terwoven, and hardly to be extricated from 
it. But the wrong is often attacked, as if 
no riffht were with it. 



138 THE FUTURE. 

Patience; then, with slow improvement; 
patience which shall prefer the best to the 
quickest means of getting rid of a wrong ; 
which shall take a long view of the future ; 
which shall not waver before the hurry and 
the rush around it, but shall stand firm, con- 
sistent, just, and faithful, — such patience is 
an unfashionable virtue in our times ; but it 
is, above all, the quality which is needful in 
a period so full of schemes, vague hopes, 
and excited anticipations. 

Such patience is far from indifference : 
it is, indeed, its very opposite. The indis- 
position to join in the loud outcry against 
an evil, when the outcry can be followed by 
no proposal of a sufficient remedy, is no sign 
of indifference to the evil. It is easy and 
tempting to get up a short-lived reputation 
for humanity and magnanimity by the fervor 
of attacks upon wrong : it is hard, and offers 
no allurement of notoriety, to devote oneself 
quietly, soberly, and patiently, to the study 
of the means of removing it, and the attempt 
to apply them. The reformer who promises 
a quick result, an instant improvement, is the 



SLOWNESS OF CHANGES. 139 

one who is listened to eagerly. But the 
durability of a reform is generally in inverse 
proportion to its rapidity. The progress 
which is permanent is made step by step, 
and not stride by stride. The great moral 
changes among men are hke the great 
physical changes in the earth. Quiet, slow, 
unobserved, tlii'ough age after age, a conti- 
nent is built up, a mountain washed away, 
and rocks crumbled into dust. Nature takes 
her own time. Age after age passed before 
the world assumed its present form ; age 
after age will pass, and gradually all will 
change. No one generation will see it, no 
one will be able to discern the particular 
and special alterations during its time ,* but 
the change goes steadily on. Nor is the 
analogy between this change in the physical 
world and that in the social world a merely 
fanciful one. In the one case, it is, indeed, 
only change ; in the other, we believe it to 
be improvement. But, in both, the j)eriods 
in which it operates are indefinitely long; 
and, in both, the processes are unobtrusive, 
often invisible, but directed by Him to whom 



140 THE FUTURE. 

a thousand years are but as a day to produce 
at last the complete result. 

There is another and very different set of 
thoughts which connect themselves with the 
preceding reflections, and which belong to 
the consideration of the future progress of 
men. 

A new element was introduced by Chris- 
tianity into all considerations of social ques- 
tions, — that of the religious responsibility 
of men, according to their enlightenment, to 
live not alone for themselves, but also for 
others. Without a foundation in religion, 
the duty which is embraced in this principle 
has an uncertain existence and a very limited 
operation. It requires to be enforced by 
Divine authority. And, notwithstanding 
that this authority was supplied by Christi- 
anity, it is quite true that, during these last 
eighteen hundred years, it has made but 
comparatively little progress, and has aflfect- 
ed society only partially, and with results 
disproportioned to its power. But, in all 
anticipations of the future, it is to be taken 



POLITICAL ECONOMY. 141 

into account as an element of constantly 
increasing force. 

It is through this principle that the appa- 
rent contradictions between the doctrines of 
some schools of political economy and the 
doctrines of high morality are to be recon- 
ciled. Political economy, when properly 
understood and studied, cannot be separated 
from the philosophy of morals. It is not 
merely the science of material wealth. The 
investigation of the laws of the acquisition 
and distribution of wealth necessarily con- 
nects itself with that of those laws by which 
the actions of men are regulated, that is, of 
the moral laws in obedience to which every 
man acts. Political economy treats of one 
branch of the relations between man and 
man ; and there is not a single action of man, 
by which others may be affected, which is 
morally indifferent. If, then, its conclusions 
on any point should seem adverse to mora- 
lity, its apparent conclusions thereby prove 
themselves to be false. Its accordance with 
the teachings of enlightened moral judgment 
is the final test of its truth. 



142 THE FUTURE. 

It is; of course; impossible to fix the stan- 
dard of this morality. Each successive age 
will; we believe, have a clearer and nobler 
view of the moral relations of man. But, 
though the standard varies by being continu- 
ally raised higher, its value as a test always 
remains the same. And it is to be con- 
sidered, that, although morality constantly 
extends its territories, yet the line and di- 
rection of its advance are already known, 
and fixed immutably. Catholic may differ 
from Protestant, one country from another, 
as to special questions of right and wrong. 
Such difference must always exist among 
men. Doubt is one of the trials and modes 
of discipline of finite creatures. But in- 
creasing experience at length shows on 
which side the right or the wrong is to be 
found, and takes away all shelter from those 
who would avoid a decision on the ground 
of the uncertainty of moral teaching. 

From this connection between the laws 
of morality and those which regulate the 
material concerns of men, it follows that 
the self-interest by which men are supposed 



SELF-INTEREST AND SELF-DENIAL. 143 

to be urged in the pursuit of material satis- 
faction must be coincident, when rightly 
understood, with that self-denial which is 
the requirement of morality, and which 
Christianity, above every other form of 
religion, establishes as the necessary disci- 
pline of virtue. 

The object of each man's life is to attain 
happiness , and, because the satisfaction of 
material wants is the first step towards hap- 
piness, because it is the necessary occupa- 
tion and the universal impulse of mankind, 
and because the means of its attainment he 
possible before every one, this has, by a 
natural but evil illusion, come often to be 
regarded more or less as being happiness it- 
self. It is in this pursuit that self-interest is 
first engaged. But the possession of comfort 
and the gratification of every material desii'e 
are not happiness. Happiness is not to be 
found in any earthly gratification separated 
from virtue. It is to be found in the union 
of the two. The practice of virtue demands 
self-denial ; and that self-interest is short- 
sighted and imperfect which does not see 



144 THE FUTURE. 

that the pursuit of material comfort is a folly, 
when disjoined from the practice of virtue. 
The self-interest that secures happiness is 
that whose vision is purified by self-denial. 
Hence all those systems which have for their 
final object simply the satisfaction of wants 
are not the systems by which happiness is 
is to be spread on earth. To eflfect this, 
the consideration of the supply of wants 
must be united with that of the performance 
of duties. 

There is nothing vague or indefinite in 
this statement. It is true, whether consi- 
dered in respect to a single individual or a 
state. The old proverb, that ^^ Honesty is 
the best policy," is a narrow illustration of 
the assent which common sense gives to the 
truth, that the most consistent virtue is the 
most refined self-interest. In the long-run, 
in the history of the prosperity and fall of 
nations, it is everywhere to be read that 
virtue is the only true guide of interest, 
and that selfishness continually disappoints 
itself. 

The practical conclusion to which this 



SELF-INTEREST AND SELF-DENIAL. 145 

doctrine leads is plain. It is, that to diffuse 
the satisfaction of material wants as widely 
as possible is the duty of every man, — is 
the end of the teachings of all correct social 
science. It is necessaiy to practise self- 
denial; in order to be able to share prosperity 
with others ', to seek material advantages for 
the sake of the spiritual power which they 
bring; to fight against misery, to help po- 
verty to relieve itself, and to bring all the 
suffering and the degraded to such a state 
that they shall not, through the craving of 
animal wants, be withdrawn from the influ- 
ence of all nobler desires. 

Never was there more need that men 
should be conscious of this truth than now. 
The course of society has been, for some 
time past, in two dii'ections. One portion 
has advanced, with unexampled rapidit)', in 
prosperity, in all the delights of life, and to 
a state of intellectual cultivation, and here 
and there of moral elevation, beyond what 
was ever known before. But, with this ad- 
vance of one part, there has been an almost 
corresponding decline of the other portion, 



146 



THE FUTURE. 



of civilized society. Never before was to 
be seen a contrast more terrible, a gulf more 
wide; between the lowest and the highest. 
The height of material prosperity is the 
measure of opposite debasement and slavery. 
The pure morahty of the purest religion 
serves by its light to show the blackness 
of that immorality which exists by its side. 
It is not to be believed that this is the 
necessary result of our civilization. Such a 
belief would be atheistic and intolerable. 
With such a belief; one would have no 
refuge but in an inert despondency. It is 
for the future to prove that these evils are 
dependent; not on the form of our civiliza- 
tion; but on wrongs that may be done away 
without involving in their destruction any 
important good, without the overthrow of 
all which the best labor of centurieS; en- 
lightened by a divine wisdom; has built up. 
And; as the future exists in the present; it 
becomes the part of those who can work 
to-day to labor under the guidance of those 
Christian principles which are sufficient; if 
faithfully acted upoU; for all the task; how- 



EVIL OF DIRT. 147 

ever overwhelming it may appear. There 
is no evil to be removed which does not 
need the application of those principles^ and 
which may not furnish an illustration of 
their connection with social progress. Take, 
for instance, the great, penetrating, physical 
evil of dirt, with the long train of moral 
evils that follow from it. Dirt is one of the 
chief miseries of the poor. It wastes their 
hard-earned gains, it feeds them on wretched 
food, it shuts them up in pestilential homes, 
it wears out their spirits, it ruins their health, 
it drives them to crime, it persecutes them 
to death. But this evil can be remedied; 
and the exertion, the labor, and the expense 
of the remedy must be borne by those who 
are prosperous and powerful, acting under 
the impulse of motives supplied by a sense 
of moral duty; and here, as always, duty 
coincides with self-interest. The fever or 
the cholera which rises from the dirt in the 
back lane, cree23s into the wide street; and 
the pestilence wliich feeds on the poor 
strikes at random among the rich. The law 
of retribution is coincident, even in this- 



148 



THE FUTURE. 



world; and with no reference to that future 
world where all acts are to be brought into 
judgment with the law of responsibility. 

It requires little knowledge of history to 
see, that hitherto^ whether in ancient or in 
modern times, the possession of power by a 
nation, or by a class in a nation, has been 
frequently — one is tempted to say usually 
— abused for the purpose of self-aggrandize- 
ment, at the expense of the weak. In many 
countries, by a long and tedious process, a 
system of international and constitutional 
checks has grown up, intended, but often 
insufficient, to restrain the wrong and in- 
justice which have thus seemed to be the 
natural accompaniments of power. But it 
requires only a slightly more complete 
acquaintance with history to perceive, that 
this abuse of power has been, under diffe- 
rent modes, but with invariable results, the 
source of corruption and the cause of decline. 
The East is full of the wrecks of power, 
shattered by its own excesses. Greece and 
Home were ruined by themselves. There is 
no exception to the rule, no escape from the 



SLAVERY. 149 

law by which present injustice is made 
the synonym of future weakness, and wrong, 
the forerunner of punishment. 

Look at the modern institution of slaYery> 
It affords the plainest illustration of this 
truth. Ever since the first small beginning 
of what was to become so monstrous an evil, 
it has seemed as if the compensation were 
being exacted in full proportion to the 
wrong. Nowhere has slavery extended, 
without sowing the seeds of weakness and 
decay. It has often associated with itself 
many of the finest exercises of human 
virtues ; it has given opportunity for the 
display of many of the noblest and most 
precious qualities of character ; it has inter- 
woven itself with the interests, the afiec- 
tions, and the religion of men. But, viewed 
broadly, with reference, not to special in- 
stances, but to its general effects upon 
national and individual character and for- 
tunes, there is but one inevitable conclusion 
to be beheld. It is spoken of often in oui- 
own country as a necessary evil. But an 
evil that may be affected for better or worse, 



150 THE FUTL-RE. 

by human agency extended through one 
generation after another^ can hardly be con- 
sidered a necessary evil. The power of 
affecting it at all implies the power of finally 
removing it altogether. It is necessary only 
so far as that it must last for a time, and 
must leave its consequences long after its 
own extinction. If we should ever become 
possessed; in some future state of being, of 
that clear vision, which, looking before and 
after, will enable us to distinguish the course 
and sequence of the events of earth, which 
we now can so imperfectly discern, may it 
not be matter of amazement to us to see how 
closely retribution followed upon wrong, 
how often it came in punishments that were 
warnings as well as penalties, and yet to 
behold how long it was before men dis- 
covered the means of escaping from the 
scourge ? It is, indeed, to be considered, 
that, in a case like that of slavery, although 
the wrong abstractly may be admitted, and 
the evil consequences in the long current 
of affairs fully acknowledged, yet the difii- 
culty of applying a remedy is vastly in- 



HARDSHIP OF REMEDIES. 151 

creased by the real or seeming interest of 
individuals being often contrary to tbat of 
the nation; — to that of posterity. It is this 
which frequently renders the remedy of a 
prevailing evil not merely difficult; but dis- 
tressing. Those who have been exposed to 
it through no fault of their own, those who 
may have done all within their power to 
bring good out of it; arC; in its removal, 
subjected to sufferings which have no con- 
nection with their personal conduct. They 
suffer under the penalty attached to the 
violation of justice : but the violation was 
committed by others ; the penalty falls upon 
them. " There is a vanity," said the Preacher; 
"which is done upon the earth; that there 
be just men unto whom it happeneth accord- 
ing to the work of the wicked." In looking 
forward to that period, which must come 
sooner or later, when slavery will be done 
away in our country, the reflection that the 
troubles which must accompany the event 
will fall upon veiy many who are most in- 
nocent of the wi'ong, cannot but alloy the 
satisfaction with which it might otherwise 



152 THE FUTURE. 

be contemplated. But, whenever it shall 
arrive^ and when slavery becomes an histori- 
cal instead of a present evil; it will then be 
more clearly seen than it can be now, that 
it has been always an instance of the truth, 
that morality founded in religion is the 
guide of interest; even in the afiairs of this 
world. 

Upon the general recognition of this truth, 
and on the conformity of men's actions to 
their belief in it, depends the future pro- 
gress of mankind. It is the spirit of 
Christianity applied to life. But very little 
of what is called Christianity is so in truth. 
ChurcheS; formS; creeds; and doctrines, may 
assert their right to the appellation of Chris- 
tian; while the spirit of the religion is absent. 
It is necessary, then, to distinguish between 
the teachings which possess divine authority, 
and those which have no other than a human 
claim to respect. Where the spirit of the 
religion is found displaying itself in action, 
there is Christianity, whether it be found 
under the name of Catholicism or Protes- 
tantism, of one sect or another. As this 



OLD TRUTHS. 153 

spirit spreads, as man after man becomes 
inspired with its gracious and benign influ- 
ences, will the improvement of the world 
go on. 

It may be said, " These are old truths : 
no one disputes them." — But no new truth 
of essential importance to the moral progress 
of the world remains to be discovered. The 
means of all possible future elevation are 
already possessed; the scope of all possible 
future effort is aheady defined. The special 
remedies for special evils may be hidden; 
but we know where to search for them. 
The blackness of a great wrong may for a 
time overhang the world; but above and 
around is the clear light of a sun, whose 
rays will by degrees pierce through and dis- 
pel the seemingly ilhmitable gloom. It is 
this belief which is enough to console one 
who beholds present sufferings, wrongs, and 
misery ; to stimulate him to exertion ; and to 
give the right direction to his attempts. 

The conclusions from all the preceding 
sections of this book have brought us to this 
point as their end. It has been seen that 



154 THE FUTURE. 

the People must be taught, helped; succored 
with physical and moral aid of every kind, 
to become what the demagogues of the day 
declare them to be, and what all thoughtful 
men desire them to become. The only 
power by which this result can be obtained 
is the power of Christian principle. It has 
been seen that Liberty is a mere jest and 
illusion, unless it is founded in moral excel- 
lence ) that a Republic is but a name for a 
Tyranny, unless it is secure in the virtue of 
its people ; that the most skilfully devised 
schemes of social reorganization have failed, 
one after another, in the attainment of their 
object, through their disregard of the moral 
laws by which men are governed, or through 
their being based upon the supposition of 
the existence of qualities among men which 
can only be the result of a long moral disci- 
pline. And with this conclusion we might 
well end; but there remains yet one consi- 
deration for our regard. 

It is that the authoritative introduction, 
by Christianity, of the principle of individual 
moral responsiblity, as a guide for human 



NATIONAL DURATION. 155 

action; opened to every nation the possibility 
of indefinite duration and perennial pros- 
perity. The privilege of our modern civili- 
zation is thus to possess within itself the 
means of overcoming the dangers which as- 
sail it; and to be secure against conquest by 
them, if it understands and exercises its own 
powers. One after another of the ancient 
empires rose and sank, without abiHty to 
avoid the fatal end. It seems almost as 
if theii* history had been worked out; to 
show to later generations the impossibihty of 
the permanent existence of any power de- 
pendent upon mere human knowledge and 
virtue; without that sanction wliich they 
can receive only from a divine revelation. 
'^What god;" said a E-oman orator; regard- 
ing the evil chances which might befall the 
state; — '' what god can we beheve could 
succor the republic; even if he would ? " "^ 
The necessary foundation for public virtue, 
for social morality, did not exist. Patriotism, 



* " Oratio pro M. Marccllo," § vii. 



156 THE FUTURE. 

magnanimity, honoi*; wanted any firm sup- 
port; and their exercise was an aflfair of 
chance and doubt. Many noble men lived, 
and devoted themselves, with no selfish pur- 
pose, to the welfare of others; but their 
example was inadequate to prove the excel- 
lence of self-denial, or to establish the exist- 
ence of a recompense for self-sacrifice. The 
introduction of Christianity was the begin- 
ning of the greatest of social revolutions : 
but it is a revolution whose course, like that 
of every other, depends on the acts of men. 
The principles which it reveals, and which, 
if acted upon, are sufiicient to insure the 
continued existence of a state, do not force 
themselves upon the world. One modern 
empire after another may rise and fall, even 
as the old, and the cause of their fall will be 
the same. Christianity, if made the rule of 
national policy and conduct, is sufficient to 
preserve any empire from decay; but the 
nation that calls itself Christian, while it is 
not so in fact, has no better security against 
decline than those which flourished in the 
early ages of the world. 



CONCLUSION. 157 

It may be the will of God that our own 
country should give another example of the 
insufficiency of material prosperity to pre- 
serve a people from decline. But such a 
result would be a warning more terrible 
than any which has been known before. 
The faults, the weaknesses, the faithlessness 
of men will have ruined the most splendid 
undertaking and the fairest prospect ever 
open to any people. The hope of the 
world will be broken, the faith of men in 
themselves and in each other will be shaken, 
and the progress of mankind be indefinitely 
delayed. 

Such must be our fate, unless we feel that 
our responsibilities are equal to our privi- 
leges, and that our only safety is in endea- 
voring, with constant effort, to fulfil them. 
Taking no low standard of duty, satisfied 
with no partial performance, no incomplete 
attainment, dazzled by no show of outward 
success, deluded by no selfish plans, turned 
aside by no popular enthusiasm, yielding to 
no fatigue or indifference, — it is for each 
one of us to do his best, feelins^ that not 



158 THE FUTURE. 

only Ills own happiness^ but that the for- 
tunes of his country, depend upon his deeds. 
The trust committed to the hands of the 
intelligent and the prosperous classes here is 
the future of their country. It is for them 
to provide against the evils which threaten 
it; by spreading and improving education; 
by laboring to throw open freely every op- 
portunity for advantages that may be shared 
by all; by checking every injustice and 
every corruption; and, above all, — includ- 
ing all, — by endeavoring to carry into daily 
life and into common actions the spirit of 
Christianity. 

""If this be the spirit of our people, the 
liberty which we now enjoy will continue 
and increase ; the republic will be the firm- 
est, as well as the best, of governments. 
There will be no need of theories of social 
regeneration ; for the principles of Chris- 
tianity are the principles of social justice, 
of equality such as is possible before God, 
and of a true fraternity among men. 

THE END. 







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